VOL. 4 ISSUE 22
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ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR — SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, JUNE 4-10, 2006
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LIFE 17
SPORTS 32
Brad Peyton’s animated orphan freaks ready for CBC
St. John’s Rod and Gun Club fired up
Shipping time bomb Placentia pilot boat crew overworked: former captain NADYA BELL
A
former pilot boat captain in Placentia Bay says overwork and lack of rest may have led to the May 28 pilot boat accident. “They used to go out through the bay, one guy down asleep and the other out on the wheel, and there was occasions where the one that was steering went to sleep,” says Capt. Oscar Blagdon, who worked on the pilot boats in Placentia Bay in the fall of 2001. At the time, he says some crews worked for up to 40 hours without a break. According to the Canada Shipping Act, crewmembers are required to sleep at least six hours every day. Two people must be on watch at any given time. Blagdon says he expressed his concerns to Transport Canada officials in St. John’s in February 2002. He later left the pilot boat business on unfriendly terms with the private contractor that runs the service, South Coast Shipping Company. An official with Transport Canada, however, says the department has no record of Blagdon’s complaint. Officials are investigating the accident to see if there were any infractions of the Canada Shipping Act. Tony McGuinness of the Atlantic Pilotage Authority couldn’t be reached for comment prior to The Independent’s press deadline. He told CBC that crew fatigue may have been a factor in why the Placentia Pilot vessel ran aground on a small island in Placentia Bay. The partially submerged vessel was recovered and brought into dry dock for repairs at Southern Harbour on June 1. Placentia Bay is one of the busiest shipping areas in Newfoundland, with a steady flow of oil tankers making their way to the Come by Chance oil refinery and the oil transshipment facility in Whiffen Head. Pilot boats transport pilots to incoming vessels, so they can help guide the ships into port. Pilots are extremely familiar with the waters of Placentia Bay, which is what made the accident so surprising. It takes ten hours to make a trip into Placentia Bay aboard a fully loaded oil tanker. On stormy days dispatchers at the Atlantic Pilotage Authority say as many as 13 vessels may be waiting to come into the bay. Stan Tobin of the Newfoundland and Labrador Environmental Association lives in Ship Cove, Placentia Bay. He says the tanker traffic is a “ticking time bomb.” See “Most likely,” page 5
QUOTE OF THE WEEK “A recent review … noted that while 50 per cent of columnists concentrated on how to fix the world in three easy steps, the other half writes about nothing but the pimples on their own arses..”
— Ray Guy, page 5
FILM SCORE 19
New blockbusters don’t impress Tim Conway IN CAMERA 8-9
A visit to Lester’s family farm Ivan Morgan . . . . . . 7 Gallery . . . . . . . . . . 18 Book review . . . . . 20 Crossword. . . . . . . 24 Rock outdoors . . . 31 •
Pam, Blair and Brody Ghent at St John's airport this week.
Paul Daly/The Independent
‘I’ll suck it up’ Resentful, guilt-ridden and pissed off, Pam Pardy Ghent writes a heartfelt column three days before her husband leaves to look for work in Alberta
By Pam Pardy Ghent For The Independent
M
y husband of 16 years is leaving me this week, but he’s too busy to talk about it. He is cleaning the fish tank, shearing the spaniel, gutting out the basement, cleaning the windows and fixing everything that is or may ever possibly break. He isn’t saying goodbye to anyone in our tiny outport home. He will simply toss his stuff in the car and leave. He will visit his parents for a night, and take our nine-year-old son out of school. Then the three of us will drive silently to St. John’s. Two sleeps later I will leave him
alone at the airport in the early morning hours and drive away. My husband is going to work in Fort McMurray. We don’t know how long he will be gone, because he doesn’t have a job yet. We don’t know where he will stay, though he does know people up there. I try not to think about it too much. He spent the last year in school and has earned a pretty title. He is now an industrial instrumentation mechanic. All that means to me is that he gets to go and do God knows what and earn who the hell knows how much. See “Why am I,” page 2
Betrayed Fishing industry reps here and in B.C. say Conservatives not meeting expectations RYAN CLEARY
F
ishing industry players on Canada’s East and West Coasts are accusing the federal Conservatives of “betrayal” for failing to follow through on perceived commitments made leading up to January’s federal election. Further, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Loyola Hearn is charged with falling under the thumb of the federal bureaucracy, the same senior civil service that led the department in the early 1990s when commercial fisheries collapsed at both ends of the country. “We feel entirely betrayed and abused, and I’m not overstating it,” says Phil Eidsvik, executive director of the B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition, a group opposed to expansion of aboriginal fishing rights. “We feel like we’ve been stabbed
in the back by people that we spent the last 12 to 14 years working for, putting up lawn signs, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to.” In an interview from Vancouver, Eidsvik, a failed Conservative candidate in the last federal election, says he was told this week the federal government intends to allow the continuation of “race-based” commercial fisheries. Eidsvik acknowledges the Conservatives didn’t directly promise to deliver “equality” in the commercial fishery, but he says salmon fishermen in B.C. were led to believe that would happen. Likewise, many voters in Newfoundland and Labrador say they were led to believe the Conservatives would take a stronger stance against foreign overfishing. Prior to his party winning power, Hearn, MP for the federal riding of St. John’s South, passed a private members’ bill in the House of
Loyola Hearn and Stephen Harper
Paul Daly/The Independent
Commons calling on Ottawa to immediately extend custodial management over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks. In an appearance May 30 before the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, Hearn said he never supported walking away form the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), the international body that oversees fishing outside Canada’s 200-mile limit. “Some people recommended that we get out of NAFO because it was
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not doing the job that it should do. However, I never said that and I went back through my reports to make sure of that,” Hearn told the committee. “I have always believed that it is better to fight within rather than without,” he said. “Should the leadership come from NAFO? Yes, but NAFO regulations need more teeth to be effective … NAFO has been in place for a long time and many members are good people. See “The collapse,” page 4
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Contact: Sean Charters, VP & Managing Director, Colour NL, 290 LeMarchant Road, St. John’s, NL A1E 1R2 Canada t. (709) 753-1258 c. (709) 687-3936 f. (709) 754-0503 e. sean@colour.ca
2 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
JUNE 4, 2006
‘Why am I so pissed?’
M A R I A S H A R A P O VA
WWW.TAGHEUER.COM
From page 1 Why is he going away? Because he has to. He has one more EI cheque and he will take every last cent of that $644 with him. That has to last him for two weeks, until he gets his first paycheque. I only hope he gets a job in the first 24 hours so he can count on money to keep himself going, and possibly send a little home to us. Don’t think I’m ungrateful. Our government put him through school, thank-you Mr. Williams, but I can’t help but be a little pissed he has to leave our province and his family this way. Newfoundland paid for a trade he will probably never use here. It is barely three years since we moved back home from Ontario for a better life for our son. While living in Newfoundland has been a blessing in so many ways, it has also been a hardto-swallow curse. I spent 15 years working for a global high-profile company. I’m educated. I’m personable. I can’t find a job. We’ve adapted as best we can. I’m part-owner of a grocery store. I write for revenue. I do palm and tarot card readings for pocket change. I juggle our bills and use credit in evil ways to survive. My husband worked two short stints away in Alberta before this and frankly, it sucked. If our son wanted to talk to his father before school we would be robbing Dad of much-needed sleep. When my husband would call at night after work, our son was often asleep. Our conversations were conducted with him standing at an outside phone booth or in some scummy hotel room with three or four other men waiting for their turn to call. Sometimes we fought or argued during these phone conversations. I was either asking why he didn’t call the night before, or telling him to stop calling so much because the phone bill was too high. We fought about money, we fought about where I was the night before. We hung up on each other. We called each other names and we threw up every bit of dirt we ever had on one another. Other conversations were better, with “I miss you” and “I love you” at the beginning and end. Our son wrote little letters to his father and we mailed him schoolwork so he could see how well our lad was doing. We sent parcels when we knew he would be staying in one place long enough — just little things so he knew we were thinking of him. We tried to adapt as best we could to a life many in Newfoundland have already grown accustomed to. We have probably just not adjusted to the normalcy of this routine. Others do it all the time. Why am I so pissed? My husband flies out the morning of our son’s karate tournament and one day before his piano recital. I will go to the karate tournament alone and cheer twice as loud. I will drag my parents to the recital. While I will be very proud, I will still miss hearing my husband’s approving whistle at the end of Popeye the Sailor Man played by chubby nine-year-old fingers. I will cry and be embarrassed. I pulled our son’s tooth out the other night under screams of protest. We have been waiting for it to come out for months now, and my husband has been watching it grow progressively looser with each passing night. I wanted the tooth fairy to have a moustache — that thing was coming out before he left if I had to use brutal force. My husband will miss Father’s Day and he doesn’t deserve to. He deserves to sleep in, get new slippers and play with our kid all day. He doesn’t deserve to be in a strange city without his family, and we shouldn’t be here without him. I know I’m not alone in feeling resentful. Watching a duffle bag slowly being packed as the week progresses makes you feel numb. Doing laundry you know you won’t be washing again for a while makes your heart ache and the “last times” bring tears you don’t bother to cover. I’ll suck it up as best I can and get through this week like it was any other, but it definitely isn’t. We’ve discussed what we will do on our last night together and have made a few plans, but as the day approaches we are just so emotionally drained that we may just go to bed early and set the alarm so we are at the airport on time. I’m sure neither of us will sleep. My husband will fret over leaving us and I will feel guilty because I get to stay. I know I am no different from dozens of others out there on this island spending the last few nights with our men as they wonder what the next few months will hold. Just because I’m not alone in this doesn’t mean I like it. My husband is leaving me not because he doesn’t love me, but because he does, and somehow that makes it worse.
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 3
SCRUNCHINS
Won’t somebody think of the children?
A weekly collection of Newfoundlandia
W
ondering how the Danny Williams administration feels about the future of the outports? Wonder no more — Dr. Doug House, the premier’s point man on economic development, spelled out his thoughts earlier this year in a presentation to B.C.’s Simon Fraser University. In Oil, Fish and Social Change in Newfoundland and Labrador: Lessons for British Columbia, House said the decline in groundfish stocks, concern about shellfish stocks, and cutbacks to Employment Insurance payments for plant workers have “undermined” the economic base of many fishing communities. “Newfoundland and Labrador is rapidly becoming urbanized,” House said. “Even the province’s vibrant cultural industries — music, drama, literature, film — although drawing on a somewhat romanticized past are, with some notable exceptions, based in and contribute to the future growth of the city. More tourists flock to George Street than to Gros Morne or Twillingate.” Given the majority of seats in the legislature represent rural areas, House said the rhetoric continues to favour rural development. “Although committed in principle to ‘real’ economic growth in rural areas through better management of the fisheries and long-term industrial diversification, the current government finds itself under enormous pressure to prop up hurting communities, households and individuals through make-work, income support and the future overexploitation of endangered fish stocks,” House said. “This vies with and threatens to undermine genuine efforts at rural industrial diversification from both government and community based-organizations.”
By Nadya Bell The Independent
T
he Janeway Foundation is asking for donations June 3 and 4 as part of the annual Children’s Miracle Network Telethon. This year, foundation officials are hoping to raise over $2 million. The growing list of donations and total funds raised makes the children seem a little like lottery winners — and in some ways, they are. The government funds the operating expenses of hospitals. Around the province, fundraising foundations raise money for capital equipment costs at the different centres. So when the Janeway or the Burin Health Centre needs new equipment, the hospital asks their charitable organization to come up with the funding. Lynn Sparkes, executive director of the Janeway Foundation, says the organization received a shopping list of $2.3 million worth of equipment from the Janeway hospital’s financial department this year. The foundation may not pull in all of the money required, but most of it will be raised over the course of the year. This is a contribution to the health-care system and Sparkes says people are better cared for because of it. There are seven major hospital charities across the province. Although they work together to provide better medical care, they are also, in essence, competing for the same donations.
EI, EI, OH The big news this week was the continuation of a pilot project that gives an extra five weeks of Employment Insurance benefits to people who live in areas with unemployment rates greater than 10 per cent. House, as it turns out, chaired the 1985 Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment. The House commission recommended the province adopt a vision tied to electronics, computers, modern transportation and communication systems that could create jobs anywhere — in the cities or the outports. The commission argued it couldn’t achieve the vision because of “inappropriate” labour market incentives such as UI and makework. This week’s announcement must have gone over like a ton of bricks in House’s office. LOTTO FEVER Of course, the easiest way to avoid the whole career/future issue is to win the lottery. Paul Knight of Mount Pearl, a retired Sears employee, won $100,000 in a March TAG draw — the seventh Newfoundland resident to win the top prize. The Needs Convenience store on First Street in Mount Pearl received a seller’s prize of one per cent of the winnings, or $1,000. Atlantic Lottery turns 30 this year. Since 1976, the lotto corporation has awarded $4.5 billion in prizes, just shy of the $4.7 billion it has recorded as profit. OH HOW I LONG … Doris Saunders, founding editor of Them Days magazine, passed away May 28 at the age of 64. The magazine contained “stories of early Labrador; recollections of times gone past yet still alive today in these words and photographs …” Saunders and her small staff interviewed Labradorians and printed their stories virtually word for word. In a 1978 issue, Saunders interviewed Arthur Ryland of L’Anse au Loup and prepared an article, Trappin’, Trawlin’ and Jiggin’. These are the lead paragraphs: “I was born right here on this spot. I wouldn’t wish to shift anywhere else, not now, not me age now. That would be about the lonesomest thing I could come into, ya know. “I was a fisherman all me life. When I was growin’ up, this day, the 14th of July, we say, there’d be plenty of stages full of fish. Those years ’tis not too often you see a boat comin’ in wit’ a load of fish. In my day we’d see boats comin’ in one after th’ other. Trap fish, trawl fish, hand-line fish. What I call hand-line is the jigger, er what we called the ‘dapper’, one hook jigger, just throw ’en out with a caplin on ’en. You’d come in wit’ a boat load, we say, but now it seem like ’tis none, no fish at all to my days.” Farewell Doris, and thanks for the wonderful read.
The Janeway Foundation makes $400,000 less a year than the Healthcare Foundation that raises money for adults at the St. John’s Health Science Centre. (As of last year, the Janeway treats anyone under 19 — the previous age cut-off was 16.) Children treated at the hospital make up less than 20 per cent of the population of the province. Some of the equipment is
The Janeway Telethon concludes June 4, 7:30 p.m. (NT) on CBC-TV.
Terms of Union may strengthen case for cost-shared prison By Ryan Cleary The Independent
J
ustice Minister Tom Marshall says the province may have a constitutional ace up its sleeve in trying to persuade Ottawa to contribute to the cost of a new federal/provincial prison — the Terms of Union. “We have a unique constitutional thing in our Terms of Union, which is that we have the right to designate where federal prisoners go,” Marshall tells The Independent. “We can keep federal prisoners here. “My point is that this unique constitutional arrangement certainly legitimizes the federal government joining us in a costshared prison here.” When it comes to incarceration, the rule of thumb is that prisoners sentenced to two years less a day serve their time in provincial prisons. Sentences longer than two years are generally served in federal penal institutions on the
FADING FISH PLANTS No doubt, Loyola Hearn is having a hard time in the Fisheries and Oceans portfolio. It seems there’s always a crisis in the fishery. Perhaps Hearn should reflect on the words of one of his predecessors, John Crosbie, who had this to say in his 1997 book, No holds barred, about his decision to close the northern cod fishery in 1992: “My action was the inevitable result of years of extreme overfishing, wildly unreliable scientific information on the size of the stocks of northern cod and their rate of reproduction, and an understandable, if misguided, tendency among politicians of all stripes to put the interests of fishermen — who were voters — ahead of the cod, who weren’t. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca
mainland. The province regularly houses federal inmates in the province, a practice that generates revenue for the provincial government. The province charges the feds about $200 a day for each federal inmate, which raised $4 million in revenue in 2005 and is expected to bring in $4.5 million this year. At the same time, Her Majesty’s Penitentiary in St. John’s — parts of which were built 150 years ago — needs to be replaced. The province is currently in negotiations with Ottawa to build a new prison in the province, estimated to cost up to $80 million. Under Term 18 of the Terms of Union, all laws in force in Newfoundland “at or immediately prior” to the date of union shall remain in effect. “One of those laws at the time would have to be where our prisoners go,” Marshall says. “So Ottawa agreed from day one that Newfoundland
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could designate where prisoners went, including prisoners who were sentenced to federal sentences.” Further, the Justice minister says the federal Corrections and Conditional Release Act gives the province the right to decide where prisoners serve their time — in the province or on the mainland. The province would have to
ensure, however, that federal programming is available to federal inmates. The West Coast Correctional Centre in Stephenville is expected to be accredited to deliver federal programs within weeks. “If we can offer the proper programming here we can keep the Newfoundlanders here close to their families, given the fact that there’s no federal prison here … it’s kind of a win-win for everybody if we got together and built a new prison jointly.” There have been complaints in recent weeks about severe overcrowding at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary. Marshall says the numbers are still up and prisoners have been transferred to facilities in Bishop’s Falls and Stephenville. “And we have been moving (federal) prisoners to the mainland,” Marshall says. “We’ll continue to do that until we have numbers down to where we’re comfortable.”
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shared with the Health Sciences, yet most of the child-sized equipment is specialized and expensive. Sparkes is aware the Janeway Foundation regularly receives some negative feedback from people who feel the children’s hospital makes too much money during the Telethon. While a significant portion of the telethon money is donated in advance, between $395,000 and $450,000 comes from individual callers over the weekend. She says organizers have come to expect some complaints, but at the same time they’re not enough to slow down the event. “For every one bad call, I get many more good ones,” she says. “And we get an opportunity to show this place off to the world.” The Janeway Foundation spent more money last year on putting off its events than the Healthcare Foundation. The Telethon alone cost $497,000, which is more than the salaries and administration of the adult charity. Catherine Bennett of the Healthcare Foundation says her organization doesn’t want to seem to be in competition, but she says they’re trying hard to “raise the profile” of their fundraising efforts. “For adult health care — it’s so hard — people don’t understand the extent of what we need.” Bennett says they try to raise support with themed fundraising. This year’s focus is on ears, nose and throat. Meanwhile, the Miracle Children event continues, with two full days of live television coverage, with local celebrities, music and promotions.
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4 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
JUNE 4, 2006
Hannah Robertson in Beijing (above), and on a recent family vacation (below).
Fred Robertson photos
Adoption process too difficult; two-tier system on the way By Stephanie Porter The Independent
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red Robertson has some harsh advice for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians looking to adopt internationally: move. “Seriously, the first thing you should do is move to another province,” he says. “Go away for a year, file your papers …” Robertson and his wife, Kathryn, were living in Nova Scotia when they adopted their daughter Hannah from China. Now almost five, Hannah is a healthy and happy Newfoundlander. The Robertsons, both working in education, currently live in Lourdes on the Port au Port Peninsula. The couple is in the process of adopting a second child — and Fred Robertson says this experience is very different. “In Nova Scotia, (the process) was something to celebrate, something to be happy about, the health department was there to help and support,” he says. It took six months to get all the paperwork and clearance s in order and sent on to China. “Here, it’s something stressful, something you have to fight for … you wake up every day wondering what hoops you’re going to have to go through.” This time around, provincial approval took nearly two-and-a-half years. Their application is now in China and they are eagerly awaiting the referral of their second child, which should occur within the next 6 months. In order to adopt a child — from Canada or another country — certain provincial requirements must be met, says Ivy Burt, director of adoptions with the Department of Health and Community Services. The adoptive parents must attend a 27-hour parenting course, known as PRIDE (parent resource for information, development and education). The family is assigned a social worker to complete a home study and assembles the required documents. The file must then be approved by the province. Robertson believes prospective parents should go through a detailed screening process — but says the one in this province is too long and too frustrating. He also says the PRIDE course is irrelevant, primarily aimed at foster parents, and no other province has one like it. “The words ‘international adoption’ are mentioned once, if at all,” he says. “You really feel that some of the workers don’t know what international adop-
tion is all about, and it just shows.” The Independent has spoken to three other individuals currently going through the international adoption process. All echo Robertson’s statements — one person on the west coast says she’s been waiting nearly 18 months for the PRIDE course, with no fixed date in sight. The individuals were reluctant to go on the record, fearful their comments may further complicate their situations. Burt says she’s familiar with the concerns of parents like Robertson — and asks for patience. In 2002, Burt says there were 13 applications for inter-country adoption. By 2004, that number had gone up to 37. She estimates there are now between 35 and 40 in process. “That (increase) placed a great deal of stress on the system,” Burt says. In that period, the wait time for the parenting course — also attended by other adoptive and foster parents — increased from six to 18 months. Extra staff was hired to address the problem, Burt says, and the current wait in the St. John’s region is about 12 months. Outside the capital, it can be much more. Burt says the province is also working towards licensing private agencies to do adoption work — sort of a twotier service. “That will give people who are concerned about wait time a capacity to hire a licenced agency to do their home study and facilitate their education,” she says. “We will provide people that option — but they will have to pay for it. “You will also be able to get the service from the department or the integrated health authority if you are prepared to wait.” Burt hopes the private agencies will
be in operation as soon as this fall. She says the PRIDE course is in the process of being updated; there are plans to offer social workers training specific in this area — cultural sensitivity, international issues, and so on. “We would not disagree that there is work that needs to be done, but it takes time to do that,” she says. “Adoptions for us is a small program; we also have many needs within our own province in terms of children and issues … I guess it’s trying to balance everybody’s needs here and applying the resources where they need to be applied.” That all sounds good, says Robertson, but he remains skeptical. “This isn’t the first time we’ve been told changes are on the way,” he says. “I’d be more impressed if the changes were made. I don’t think they understand our concerns.” He looks forward to participating in future meetings with the government. As an executive member of Newfoundland and Labrador Families Adopting Multiculturally, he also hopes to see the association evolve from an organization devoted to protest into a group of support and sharing. Meantime, if he and his wife make the decision to adopt a third child, Robertson says he’s seen enough to make up his mind already. “There’s no two ways about it, we would leave … these people who are going through this, are people who could find jobs and clearance in other provinces. “Newfoundland and Labrador is losing people hand over fist and this certainly isn’t a drawing card for people to stay.” stephanie.porter@theindependent.ca
‘The collapse of the fishery will continue’ From page 1 Generally we only hear about the bad people. “From my observations, I think that we could make NAFO the kind of organization that could do the job more quickly and more easily, than the creation of a new organization could do. However, saying that you will do something and getting the international co-operation to do it are two entirely different processes.” Gus Etchegary, a retired fishing industry executive and long-time fisheries advocate, publicly supported Hearn leading up to the federal election, going so far as to make radio advertisements urging people to reelect the Conservative MP. “There’s no doubt whatsoever the industry and its participants have been betrayed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and its successive ministers,” Etchegary says. “I regret the decision (to support Hearn) in light of what’s transpired, particularly in light of what’s been expressed in front of the Senate committee. The collapse of the fishery will continue.” Eidsvik tells The Independent federal bureaucrats are the “most important fac-
tor” in Hearn’s apparent change in stance. Hearn’s chief of staff, Scott Tessier, is on a leave of absence from DFO, where he was executive advisor, office of the senior associate deputy minister. As well, Steve Outhouse, Hearn’s communications director, is on leave from DFO where he was a communications advisor. “Normally when a minister goes into a department he takes a couple of party hacks to protect him and give him independent advice from the department,” Eidsvik tells The Independent. “Hearn’s senior staff know that when he goes they’re going to have to go back to the department. So where do their loyalties lie? “It’s one reason that we think we can’t get accurate advice to him,” he says. “I like Loyola, but he’s not as tough as I thought he was and I misjudged him myself.” Etchegary agrees, saying Hearn has been “collared” by senior bureaucrats. “There’s no doubt whatever that the Loyola Hearn who made the commitments before the election isn’t the same man now.” Commercial fisheries for species such as cod collapsed in the waters off
Newfoundland and Labrador in the early 1990s and have yet to recover. B.C.’s commercial salmon fishery also experienced a severe decline in the early ’90s, with the first-ever closure of the fishery in 1998. The salmon fishery was closed again in 2005, although it’s expected to reopen this year. “I don’t know of a single DFO bureaucrat who’s been fired or disciplined over what’s happened to our fishery,” says Eidsvik, adding many B.C. fishermen were once NDP supporters, before turning to the Reform Party, then moving on to the Canadian Alliance and eventually joining the Conservatives. “A portion of the guys already went back to the NDP … what’s happening here is he (Hearn) is driving the rest of them back there too.” The past 14 years have been marred by legal battles, blockades and occasional violence in the dispute over native-only commercial salmon fishing in B.C. The fighting began in 1992 when the former Conservative government of Brian Mulroney initiated a pilot program to run separate commercial fisheries for first nations. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 5
‘Pimple-arse pioneer’ Ray Guy makes his return to the pages of The Independent with a look forwards, and back “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” — Mark Twain
G
ood for The Independent, I say, which like poor dead Lazarus, took up its bed and
walked. It wasn’t so much divine intervention in this case as a few odd stubbornistas who applied mouth-to-mouth, brought the patient to the vertical and ordered, “Work your legs, godamit! Work your legs!” A pretty thing, indeed, to watch. But on to less pretty and inspiring sights. Moi. Both The Independent and I were reported to have gone out on the evening tide. My own poor case was reported in what was to have been the last issue of The Independent. There have been a few calls ever since, one or two of them sympathetic, some of them offering to court the Widow Guy with a view to the vast fortune I must have gleaned from journalism over the years. Tough titty on all counts. (1) I’m not dead yet. (2) We recently had to sell the car to get the cat fixed. “Where have I been lately that might interest you?” Regina McBride. In the days of the old, old Evening Telegram we still had what was called “The Women’s Editor.” This was back when women didn’t suffer the burden of liberation. More simple times when fashions, fund-raisers and fingernail polish were the heavy news for that gentle gender. Miss McBride always started her column with the above sentence and followed with a back-breaking round of social events in St. John’s. She was damned admirable. If only the allmale newsroom had showed half her stamina we “coulda been a contenda.” I’m so old I can remember when the
SHIPPING NEWS Keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the ships in St. John’s Harbour. Information provided by the Coast Guard Traffic Centre. MONDAY Vessels arrived: Maersk Dispatcher, Canada, from Terra Nova; Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, from Terra Nova; Atlantic Osprey, Canada, form Terra Nova; Oceanex Avalon, Canada, from Montreal; Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, from Bay Bulls; Flanders, Canada, from Bell Island. Vessels departed: Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, to Bay Bulls; Beaumont Hamel, Canada, to Bell Island; Oceanex Avalon, Canada, to Montreal.
RAY GUY
A Poke In The Eye very first female news reporter arrived. Talk about your rare bird. The word came down from on high that the volume of f-words was now to be kept down to a dull roar and anyone commenting on our new colleague’s limbs or chest was to be de-nutted. For a couple of years these constraints nearly killed the practice of journalism at The Evening Telegram. Then we noticed that our new otherlygendered colleague was using more fwords that even the sports editor ever did. True, she sounded like she’d been practicing long and hard in front of the mirror at home … but it was the thought that counted. All this preamble brings me around to modern times. HOW TO FIX THE WORLD A recent review of the media in Canada noted that while about 50 per cent of columnists concentrated on how to fix the world in three easy steps, the other half writes about nothing but the pimples on their own arses. Pick up the Globe and Mail and see how true this is. Me, me, me journalism. Being of the ancient generation I’ve always poo-hooed this trend but then I stopped and considered and was brought up with a nasty start. I have been a pimple-arse pioneer! My own entry into columnization, for the first six months or so, was a steady diet of thumping the AntiChrist Smallwood and his evil henchmen. Then some kindly elder took me to one side and explained: “They’re not going to take a steady diet five days a week — you need some jam to
help the castor oil go down.” So with one eye still on the multiheaded Beast, I started chucking in every other column bits of trivia about catching conners and having funerals for dead sculpins and other “Outharbor Delights.” Nobody much remembers about the times I kneed poor Joey … but there’ve been six or seven books put together about the small stuff. You see, I really was a pioneering me-me-me journalist in Newfoundland. But when someone phoned and said that this would be the “last” issue of The Independent I made a grave and foolish mistake. Me, at my age, making such a basic error. Never trust a news reporter to be off the record until she (or, OK, he) will submit to full-
‘Most likely place to have the next spill’ From page 1 He helped compile a government study in the early 1990s of recommendations for tanker traffic to prevent oil spills. “The study found that Placentia Bay was by far the most likely place to have the next spill,” Tobin says. Human error causes on average 85 per cent of all marine accidents. “Anything at all can happen,” Blagdon says. “You can have a heart attack, and if there’s no one there and you’re close to land — you could be moving anywhere from 15 to 22 knots — it doesn’t take very long before you’re up in the cliff. nadya.bell@theindependent.ca
TUESDAY Vessels arrived: Maersk Norseman, Canada, from Hibernia. Vessels departed: Atlantic Kingfisher, Canada, to Hibernia; CCGS Terry Fox, Canada, to Halifax; ASL Sanderling, Canada, to Corner Brook; Maersk Dispatcher, Canada, to White Rose Oil Field. WEDNESDAY Vessels arrived: Maersk Chignecto, Canada, from White Rose. Vessels departed: Maersk Norseman, Canada, to Hibernia. THURSDAY Vessels arrived: Atlantic Eagle, Canada, from Terra Nova; Anticosti, Canada, from Terra Nova; Cabot, Canada, from Montreal; Maersk Chancellor, Canada, from White Rose; Maersk Nascopie, Canada, from Hibernia. Vessels departed: Mokami, Canada, to Magdalen Islands; Sir Wilfred Grenfell, Canada, to sea; Anticosti, Canada, to Terra Nova; Atlantic Eagle, Canada, to Terra Nova. FRIDAY Vessels arrived: Irving Canada, Canada, from Saint John; Sea Bird, Denmark, from Montreal; Hanseatic, Bahamas, from Twillingate.
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body search for tape recorders, pencils, burnt sticks, even. I blabbed away about having a stroke. Sorry couldn’t write a last column. No blame to the reporter but, Jesus, Mary and Joe, the report came out like Lord Nelson perishing on the deck of the “Victory”! Kiss me, Hardy … but no tongues! So, surprise, I had a stroke … or as they say in medical circles, “a significant event.” A distant past with a bottle of Smirnoff’s and five packs of Rothman’s a day (plus working for the old, old Evening Telegram) doesn’t come free. They’re still counting how many marbles I have left out of a slender original supply. Well, by God, I still have THIS many, said he, being from hardy stock and that far greater Bay. I’ve got lots
of new material for me, me, me columns. One bit is that if you don’t perish they’ll try to snuff you with interminable medical tests. Another is that just waiting around two hours to have blood drawn knocks any “poor pitiful me” nonsense out of your head. However bad you are there’s someone worse. Even if you’re sitting there trying to hold your guts in with both hands the poor bugger next to you is carrying his head under one arm. See you next time depending on … No, shag that old fraud with the scythe and hour-glass. Depending on whether or not Mr. Editor, also up from his purported death-bed, pays me for the last Gee Dee column I wrote for this quality sheet you now hold in your discerning hooks.
6 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
JUNE 4, 2006
Strike zone A
nybody who messes with Danny Williams or his peeps can expect “a (fill in blank) to the head.” Let’s see … boot to the head? No, that doesn’t sound right, the premier is on the diminutive side — and he’s no Andy Wells in terms of Kung Fu fighting. Bullet to the head? No, too IRA — Newfoundlanders are far too relaxed for that much trouble. Crab apple to the head? Too bayman a thing for a Townie premier to be at. BB to the head? Too dangerous … a person could lose an eye that way. Rock to the head? Hold on, maybe we’re onto something now. Rock to the head definitely has a Newfoundland feel to it — and keep in mind Williams is a hard-ticket corner boy who could probably pick off John Cabot’s metal head from the top step of Confederation Building — so yes, let’s go with rock to the head. Sorry, wrong on all counts. Anybody who messes with Danny or his peeps can expect “a softball to the head.” That’s right, the premier said it himself the other night during the supper news while making a point about John
RYAN CLEARY
Fighting Newfoundlander Risley and FPI. Right away it struck me — softball to the head? What the hell is that about? But then I thought about it … what does a pitcher do when a batter crowds the plate but rip the ball at the guy’s noggin. Guess that’s the message the premier’s sending Risley. One thing about our Danny — he doesn’t pull his swing. Piss him off and you’ll know it soon enough by the ball whizzing by your temple and the dirt on your tongue from kissing home plate. Too bad all politicians aren’t as straightforward right off the bat. Which brings me to my favourite topic as of late — Loyola Hearn. I don’t mean to pick on the guy, but he’s got it coming. Before I do, I feel compelled to go through a short list of favourite characters I’ve met in Newfoundland politics over the years: John Crosbie, the most entertaining by far, in an I’m-too-coolto-open-my–eyelids, how-can-I-freak-
out-the-Sheila-next-to-me way; Clyde Wells, the most serious, in a don’tinterrupt-me-while-I’m-correcting-you moment; Brian Tobin, the most endearing of all, in a turbot-hanging-on-by-its fingertips, sickening sort of way. All three men have something in common in that you knew what to expect, which was nice — no surprises. Gus Etchegary is the same way — no holds barred contempt for DFO. Loyola used to a critic himself, but not since he became head coach. BEFORE Before election: “It (NAFO) is a farce, unless they have some way of making sure people adhere to quotas. It’s crazy. It’s laughable.” — The Independent, January 2005 AFTER After election: “Some people recommended that we get out of NAFO because it was not doing the job that it should do. However, I never said that and I went back through my reports to make sure of that.” — Senate standing committee, May 30
Loyola may not have said definitively prior to the election that he was gunning for NAFO, but he certainly left the impression (see private members’ motion of March 2004 to immediately extend custodial management over entire Grand Banks) and he didn’t say a word to correct anyone. NAFO has been around for years and no one’s been able to fix it, but Loyola says he’s the man. Says he: “I have always believed that it is better to fight within (a paper bag) rather than without.” Wonder why Loyola didn’t mention that before the federal election? Oh right, because of those little details that were occupying his time — votes. Loyola said something else interesting last week: “NAFO has been in place for a long time and many members are good people. Generally we only hear about the bad people.” What is the word that people use to describe what those “bad people” do to fish stocks on the Grand Banks? Oh right — rape. I can see how that would overshadow the rainbows and sunshine. Moving on to joint management — that’s where the federal and provincial
governments work together to manage the fishery — Loyola said this week that will never happen, primarily because poor old Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t have the money to pay its share of the cost. Says Loyola: “As much as I love my province … to think that we could manage the offshore fishery with what we have right now, is not imaginable.” Last time I checked there were hardly any groundfish left offshore to manage. It should be cheap enough to keep an eye on the few fish that are left. In Loyola’s defense, it will take a real shit-disturber to change gears within the bowels of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. That shit disturber isn’t Loyola. It may not even be the Conservatives. Since they’ve taken office the party has pledged to reopen the Gander Weather Office and extend EI benefits by an extra five weeks in areas of high unemployment. I wouldn’t exactly categorize those swings as over the fence — more like routine fly balls. ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca
YOUR VOICE Granny’s ‘not adverse’ to a draw Dear editor, This is the first e-mail I’ve sent about a columnist, although I read Ivan Morgan every week in The Independent. What Ivan said in his last column (Of fatties and fatheads, May 28-June 3 edition) was dead-on, but I have to admit that I laughed till I ached. Even as a senior I’m not adverse to a draw. Just imagine the headline, Granny arrested for traf-
ficking, if I pass a joint to my elderly pal in the mall. I know tons of people who could have criminal records for the same offense as this kid (Blaketown teenager recently charged with trafficking for passing a joint at school). Poor judgment, but didn’t we all have it at 15? Keep up the good work. Name withheld by request, St. John’s
‘Only in the Senate’ Dear editor, Kudos to Prime Minister Stephen Harper — we finally have someone who sees some sense in streamlining the election system and the totally outof-control Senate. Where in the real world of Canada do people get paid, show up whenever they feel like it, and, oh by the way, whatever decision they make means nothing … only in the Senate. Call me cynical or just plain pissed off … 99.9999 per cent of the population have to put in a hard and long day’s work, climb through every hoop imaginable just to get a raise, and these people just sit there. Don’t get me wrong, if someone was going to hand me a pile of money and expect nothing in return, well, I would have to take it, but that doesn’t make it right. On the
topic of limiting the calling of elections to every four years, I thing it’s great. Probably not going as far as I would like it, but it is a huge step in the brushing off of the colonial dust that we haven’t been able to shake. The prime minister seems to be taking steps to keep Canada on the world stage. Furthering the commitment to Afghanistan (and yes, we should be there, with the rest of the free world), aid to the Sudan and on and on. He may not be perfect, but the naysayers who thought the world would come to an end when he became prime minister were shut up faster than Paul Martin under Jean Chretien. Keep up the good work my prime minister. John Carew, St. John’s
‘Don’t question me, I’m Danny’ Dear editor, I had the opportunity and pleasure of visiting the House of Assembly on May 17. It was almost to the point of embarrassment to watch the attitudes and conduct of the members and the disrespect they have for each other, their reason for existence seemed lost in their actions. It is frustrating to the viewers of the telecast. I feel members of the House do not appreciate the importance of question period and the operation of the House being broadcast to the residents. The personality of the premier came to light during discussions on the fishery, the topic of the day. When pressed by the Opposition, he got down and dirty and attacked the member opposite. Comments thrown across the House were unbelievable. However, his true colour was delivered as a textbook copy of former
Premier Joey Smallwood — he questioned the intelligence of the member opposite and since his election as premier he has provided the same respect towards the residents of the province. Much like Joey during the early days of the government in Newfoundland — Don’t question me, I’m Joey. Don’t question me, I’m Danny. The premier did not show any professionalism or class during the sitting. The premier has shown over the past months he has no idea how the fishery in the province operates and continues to pay it lip service with no results. Yes, we all know the fishery is a very complex problem, but as the government of the day it must be dealt with to save what is left of rural Newfoundland. It takes a joint effort of the federal and provincial governments. Boyd Legge, Mount Pearl
AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR
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Who cries for the fishes?
T
he legions of young people heading off to Fort McMurray on the daily Air Canada flight probably think foreigners and herds of rapacious seals destroyed the fishery. The truth is a lot closer to home. Until the invention of the modern dragger after the Second World War, most of what is now considered the offshore fishing grounds was a vast marine sanctuary where fish could feed and spawn unharassed. Periodically fish migrated into shallow areas where they became accessible to the premechanical fishery. Even in a very poor year our ancestors caught 500 million pounds of northern cod alone with traps and baited hooks. At even $2 a pound it’s easy to see how that would have provided us with the economic foundation for our society until the sun went out. Instead, when we ended foreign overfishing with the declaration of the 200-mile limit in 1977, we picked up where they left off. Companies like Fishery Products led by Gus Etchegary soon had every trawler in their fleet dragging on the northern cod spawning grounds off the northeast coast. The fish they landed were mostly prespawners that should have been left to mature and spawn. Instead, they were scooped up in a gold rush that saw the island’s fish plants working around the clock. After a few years when high interest rates and poor management bankrupted the companies, government stepped in to bail out the Bank of Nova Scotia and created FPI and National Sea. The licensed overfishing continued flat out. It was obvious to anybody who cared to look that this strategy would result in disaster. DFO scientists who sounded the alarm were ignored. One DFO paper in the mid-1980s reported that Canadian draggers were dumping in excess of 15 million juvenile northern cod overboard in a ten-week period on the Funk Island Bank. This continued until there wasn’t enough fish left to pay for fuel, at which point then-minister of Fisheries and Oceans, John Crosbie, announced
OWEN MYERS
Guest column
Strangely, the only hope is to do nothing and hope that stocks recover on their own. Despite all the rhetoric about recovery plans, that is all that fisheries management is really about. the fishery was closed for conservation reasons. Victor Young, then-president of FPI, got the Order of Canada. The senior fisheries civil servant through most the overfishing, Dr. Arthur May, became president of Memorial University and now heads the environmental organization — One Ocean. Richard Cashin continued to lead the FFAW with his doppelganger, Earle McCurdy, proving the union to be the most politically durable organization on the planet, hardly equaled by the North Korean Kims. Eric Dunne, DFO’s top man in Newfoundland, went on a distinguished retirement and even today is regularly consulted by government on fisheries management. Bill Barry, who served the government ably as a prophet of much hope, if not action, in Burgeo and Canso, continues in that role today. On the provincial processing front, the provincial government’s state planned fish processing is inevitably meeting the same fate as all other central state planning schemes. Perhaps we should hire some of the former bureaucrats from the failed communist economies of Eastern Europe to explain why it doesn’t work — the intellectual equivalent of paint by num-
bers. Similarly the nonsense being spouted about aquaculture simply masks the reality that fish farming generates massive pollution, is an incubator for disease and robs inshore fishermen of fishing grounds. As for the farm-hand jobs, they are minimum wage, permanent, part-time positions. The proposed expansion of fish farming on the south coast is probably going to be fueled by allowing seiners to overfish the herring stocks because cheap feed is the most important economic factor in making money from fish farming. Mr. Barry is even offering to save DFO money and do the research to determine the size of the herring stocks. A classic case of the fox being given the keys to the henhouse. A representative of the Barry Group was only recently talking about schools of herring nine miles long, bringing to mind shades of the kind of rhetoric that brown-nosing DFO scientists used to spout in the media. I can always remember hearing one of them on the CBC science program Quirks and Quarks stating that there was a spawning biomass as large as PEI off the northeast coast that year and it was a mystery why inshore fishermen were reporting no fish. A few months later the fishery was shut down. Strangely, the only hope is to do nothing and hope that stocks recover on their own. Despite all the rhetoric about recovery plans, that is all that fisheries management is really about. There is one simple decision to make: do we kill a fish? If we do, is it before or after it has spawned. If the stocks recover and we revert to our traditional harvesting strategy of waiting for fish to migrate into shallow water we could have a sustainable fishery again Meanwhile, in rural Newfoundland the fishing economy for this and the next generation is all over. It’s enough to make you cry. Owen Myers if a lawyer and former fishery observer living in St. John’s.
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 7
Liberals throw in the towel S
o the leaders of the Liberal party came down from the mountain with their tablets — again — and revealed that their new leader was now the warmed-over Gerry Reid. Gosh! Honest to God, that really pisses me off. They have thrown in the towel a year and a quarter before the next election. They have effectively announced that Danny Williams will have no real opposition. They have effectively announced that they, the Liberals — traditionally the party of suck-ups and opportunists — cannot generate enough hype to get even their “C” list yahoos to bite. So poor old Gerry is just going to have to do the right thing and keep the seat warm a little while longer. I saw him on the TV the other evening. He was not exactly ecstatic. No one carried him out of the room on their shoulders chanting “Gerr-EE Gerr-EE.” Not a lot of “Reid Fever” getting generated. I have no axe to grind with Gerry Reid. He seems a decent, honourable and capable fellow, and a fine interim leader. Kind of puts you in mind of
IVAN MORGAN
Rant & Reason Loyola Sullivan’s or Ed Byrne’s tenure with the Tories — although Reid is more capable. He has three university degrees, including a master’s in philosophy, which suggests he is no dummy. And I hope he doesn’t take offence at this, but he ain’t “The One.” He must know this. The Liberal brain trust knows it. The public knows it. Danny and his lot know it. They must be salivating at the prospect of pulling a Frank McKenna (in 1987 the young Mr. McKenna won every seat in the New Brunswick legislature). Don’t think it will happen here? There aren’t that many safe Liberal seats. Don’t forget that part of the rumoured “deal” Kelvin Parsons trotted out was that his son would run as a Tory in his riding when he stepped down. Not exactly the
YOUR VOICE ‘Starved for a bit of fish’ Dear editor, The theory is that since Chinese are cheaper labour, they get the work. The fact is if you don’t give them the fish, keep the work here, make it a premium product by demand, it will still offer enough profit. It was said last week that if all fishing vessels at sea this year alone were to get their quota, the seas would have nothing left. That makes it a premium, no matter what the virtual market says.
tone of a committed party man with a burning passion for “Liberalism” — whatever that was supposed to be — is it? Danny’s people say the premier is not interested in that kind of victory. They say he doesn’t need every seat. He didn’t need a gazillion dollars either, but I don’t remember getting a break on my cable bill. Past actions speak louder to me than communications weasels. Of course he wants every seat, if he can get them. And there is no shortage of Tories out there looking to ride on his coattails. So, barring a miracle, this re-tread Opposition leader more or less guarantees a lukewarm Opposition for the next five or more years. The NDP will put up a fight, but they have their own worries. Lorraine Michael is going to need a few pairs of comfortable, union-made shoes if she is to pull off Jack Harris’ old trick of being more popular than his party in Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi. And if she is not successful, how long will Randy Collins sit in the House all by his lone-
some? And what will he do while he sits there? And never mind Randy Collins, how many of the current Liberal caucus have the stomach to sit across from Danny Williams for the next five or so years? How many of the others are quietly Kelvining behind the scenes? Sure the premier is doing an OK job, and the polls reflect the population’s approval. But that high approval rating owes a lot to the fact that the Opposition is not very effective. Danny’s good, but he’d be better with someone to hold his little bitty feet to the fire. And good as he thinks he is, there is bound to be rot setting in around him, as his less-than-stellar minions get more and more comfortable. It sometimes appears to me that many provincial Liberals confuse the word leadership with the word opportunism. We have seen so many of them spend so much money to tell us how marvellous they are. Now they are all doing the Tobin thing, spending more time “with the family.”
Not good enough. We need an effective opposition now. Hello? Anyone out there? If you are a young Liberal, do yourself, and the rest of us, a favour. Watch the House of Assembly channel when it is in session. Look at the smug lot sitting around Danny, obediently basking in his reflected grandeur. Look at them. Doesn’t that make you want to run for office, so you can get in the House and wipe those smug grins off their faces? Wouldn’t it be worth it to see those little beads of sweat on the foreheads of ministers suddenly realizing that Danny’s communications people haven’t written them a script for the question you are asking them? He might not be “The One,” but Gerry Reid is a real leader. He is taking on a role I don’t think he wants, out of obligation and duty. That’s a lot more than can be said for the droves of stay-at-home opportunists the Liberal party seems to harbour. Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com
MAN IN MOTION
We’ll eat it until they come with top dollar. Plus, the Chinese will not even feel the loss of a few jobs. The Chinese have work cities of eight million people (and more than one of them!). They are not going to miss a few thousand fish-plant jobs. C’mon b’ys, how long is this going to continue? I’m starved for a bit of fish. Gerard Whelan, St. John’s
‘What mining companies send into pristine ponds is not vitamin D’ Dear editor, If proposed amendments to the Metal Mining Effluent Regulations are not retracted by Environment Canada, than any fresh water body in the province or country could be polluted with toxic waste from mining. In other words, “deleterious substances” will be allowed to pollute fish-bearing waters contrary to the Fisheries Act. At the risk of over-using the word precedent, this proposed change, which is not yet law, would set a precedent for this practice to be more easily used at any mine site in Canada. The mining company Aur Resources plans to do just that — use freshwater ponds in central Newfoundland to dump their mine wastes. If ponds and fish habitats multiplied like the seal population there would be less reason for concern. However, what mining companies send into
pristine ponds is not vitamin D. To use the iceberg analogy, often what we see and hear looks good on the surface but much of the potential harm lies under water — literally. Some dark consequences of using ponds for tailings are immediate and obvious, while other repercussions may be long term, and less apparent. The province and Canada is dotted with ponds, lakes, and wetlands that may be conveniently close to new mining projects. Not only would a pleasant clean ecosystem be tarnished, but people’s freedom now and in the future would be more restricted. It would mean fewer places where you could drink from, fish from, swim in, and enjoy wildlife sights and sounds. Efforts should continue to plan a safe and non-polluting solution to the mine-waste impoundment controversy. That would be a good precedent. Charles Cheeseman, Mount Pearl
Premier Danny Williams met with wheelchair athlete, advocate and educator Rick Hansen in his office June 1. Hansen’s visit came in advance of the Wheels in Motion events taking place across Newfoundland and Labrador June 11. Hansen is best known for wheeling around the world during his Man in Motion World Tour (1985-87), traveling 40,000 km and raising funds and awareness for people with disabilities. Paul Daly/The Independent
Old and wild and free Editor’s note: Doug Bird, The Independent’s cartoonist, is currently bicycling across Canada, providing the paper with periodic updates on his journey.
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What has MUN become? Dear editor Graduation is a time for reflection. Since my convocation from Memorial last week, I have pondered a great deal. This reflection has left me both disturbed and angered. The convocation was supposed to be a time to celebrate the accomplishments of university students; in contrast Dr. Axel Meisen viewed this as an ample opportunity for university promotion. His address was nothing more than an advertisement for the university concentrating on revenue. The speech was recognition of profit instead of accomplishments of the graduates. One promotional tool used was a video based on the theme “becoming.” As the ceremony progressed my fellow graduates and I were graciously honoured by the presence of Dr. Phillip Riteman, a holocaust survivor who received a doctor of laws degree. This man is extremely courageous and has faced unthinkable atrocities. I feel Dr. Meisen’s promotion speech overshadowed Dr. Riteman’s important message, which is unfortunate. As a woman I also found this promotion video extremely sexist. During
my time at this university many things have stood out to me, predominantly women at this university are still not acknowledged in the same manner as their male equals. This video showcased four men and one woman. This is hardly an equal representation, especially given the numerous women who could have contributed to the video. The focus on promotion by the president of MUN is an insult to graduates. As graduates, convocation was supposed to be about our accomplishments. This is a convocation address, not a speech for recruitment. It takes quite a lot of dedication, time, and money to walk that stage, we deserve this time for recognition. MUN has become preoccupied with making money and has lost sight of its primary focus of education. It both angers and saddens me to see what MUN has become. This university was built as an institution of higher learning to better Newfoundlanders, yet over the years it has come closer to resembling a business. Jennifer Shea, recent M.A. (Sociology) graduate, St. John’s
Bureaucrats got him Dear editor, Read your column (Loyola’s answers, May 28-June 3 edition by Ryan Cleary) — cannot agree more — he is completely captured by his bureaucrats and it is worse our here in B.C. than it is in your province. If I could say one thing to say to the voters in Hearn’s riding it would be: “Send us a Conservative if you want, but don’t send us Loyola.” Phil Eidsvik, British Columbia Fisheries Survival Coalition, Vancouver, B.C. P.S. I am hearing this on the docks, “Liberal, Tory — same old story.”
nyone who can afford to take a three-month vacation does not work for this newspaper or has greater entrepreneurial adventures than I. That means when cycling across the country we have to live skinny, cooking for ourselves and finding opportune places to camp for free. Age enters into this: I’m nearly 50. I should be washing the Chrysler 300, playing golf and trying to get my grown children out of the house instead of lying low in farm fields and behind rest-area privies. I’m finding it’s all about age. My 20-year-old self would have acted much differently when the cop asked, “‘Do you live here?’” We were camped behind an abandoned farm just off Highway 15 near Hanna, Alta. Our bikes were against the house, our tent was up and camping paraphernalia was all over the place. The cop drove up, leapt from his cruiser and brusquely asked his question. I did not say, well sir I just bought this lonely hole to start an industrial hemp operation. “No sir,” is what I did say. “What are you doing here?” asked the cop. Is this guy a straight man or what? I did not say that we were two middleaged criminals on the lamb, escaping
justice on bicycles. I did say, ‘Well sir, we’re cycling across the country … blah blah blah.” After enough deferential behaviour, a little obsequious conversation and a lot of yes sirs he wandered off assured he had the situation under control. Did I mention he was a young fellow? I am an old fellow, smart enough to have learned from experience that you never underestimate the lack of a sense of humour in people in authority. The night before we were camped behind a few big round hay bails near a microwave relay tower. Someone must have seen us because an officer in a cruiser drove up the road to the tower, turned around and gave us a good look. He assessed the situation, shrugged and drove off. Even if he took a close enough look to see the gin and tonic (with ice and lime on a 33degree prairie day) he would have congratulated us on our ingenuity. He didn’t want to control anything. He knew right away there would be no civil disobedience from us and even if there was we are on bicycles. He could just catch us tomorrow. He was an old guy. I’m 48 years old and it’s great. I am wise enough to outsmart the young fellows and young enough to fly down the backside of the Rodger’s Pass at 70k on a bicycle, a feat that got me closer to being road kill than a moose from Brigus Junction. Doug Bird is bicycling his way home to Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s.
JUNE 4, 2006
8 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 9
IN CAMERA
A wonderful way of life
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ohn Lester looks the part of a fifth-generation farmer, with a soft handshake, grey hair and deliberate manner. His great-great grandfather arrived on the boat from Dorset, England when he was only 16. His son will likely carry on as the tradition passes on to the sixth generation. Lester is also a clever farmer. Staying in business has meant turning his farm into a farm attraction. He offers what people — and, more importantly, children — want to see and do at a farm. That’s how he draws them to Brookfield Road, skirting the border between St. John’s and Mount Pearl, rather than the closest grocery store. The U-pick strawberry operation is looking good for this year, as are the baby pumpkin plants for the fall. Lester says the goats, emus and bunny rabbits are what really keep the
farm going. “Within the City of St. John’s, it’s surprising how many people haven’t had any contact with animals. If there has been any one thing that has helped us grow our business, it has been the animals,” he says. The baby goats are a month old now, and Lester expects to get some pigs and cows to add to the petting zoo. With a new addition to the barn, the animals can now go outside or stay in as they wish. Over the course of the year, several thousand school children visit the farm to get a taste of rural life. It’s a novel experience — only 3 per cent of Newfoundland is workable for farming, and even less is made up of active farms. Lester’s vegetables are not sold in grocery stores. Five years ago he decided to run a shop on his land, and set his own pric-
ing, giving him some control over the financing of his operation. The season is already 10 days ahead of last year. Thanks to early warm dry weather, the farm’s workers have been planting since the first of May. Lester says less rain than normal this spring and the small amount of frost last winter left the top of the soil dryer than usual. They have started irrigation pools in case the summer ahead is also dry. The farm produces 50 acres of vegetables over the year. Lester’s potatoes are among the first crops planted with a tractor potato planter. The early corn crops are planted under a layer of photo degradable plastic to keep them warm. As the corn grows, it pushes up through the plastic, helping to keep the weeds down.
Over 4,000 baby pumpkin plants are in the greenhouse waiting to be planted, while the rest of the crops are planted directly in the ground through dark black plastic. Lester has also developed a method for growing green peppers commercially outdoors, no small feat in Newfoundland’s climate. “The demand for our products does not allow us to be fully organic; we have to keep our products on the shelves. But we require a very minimal amount of pesticides,” he says. “In the ideal world everything would be grown organically.” Lester says he is very careful about the chemicals used. Because many bugs cannot survive the Newfoundland climate, farms here do not have nearly as many problems with infestations. Lester says customers are more comfortable buying vegetables from his shop than chain grocery stores because they know
Lester’s family farm on Brookfield Road in Mount Pearl officially opened this weekend with a flower and vegetable plant sale. Photo editor Paul Daly and reporter Nadya Bell stopped by last week to meet the new goats, see the young sprouts, and talk about the growing season ahead.
exactly how the produce is grown. His family farm on Brookfield Road officially opened June 2, with a flower and plant sale. But he doesn’t encourage people to plant anything too tender, because there is still a chance of frost until the middle of June. “This is our fifth year growing flowers for sale,” he says. “We’re getting to the point more where we think we can grow a flower.” Rising fuel prices have increased the cost of shipping produce to Newfoundland. Lester says he suffers from similar problems with inflation. “There is not one single item, with the exemption of the water, that we pump from our well, that hasn’t gone up in price,” he said. “Fuel is probably going to be the biggest factor in the pro-
duction of food, followed closely by the cost of labour.” Lester takes on up to 30 students in the busiest season to work the farm. The U-pick strawberry operation is looking good for the third year, and Lester hopes for an early harvest this July. The sweet corn is also planted and may be as much as two weeks early, coming in the middle of August. With the spinach coming along soon, the first veggies will be ready for sale at Lester’s market in late June. Looking to the future, Lester says the farm may eventually host birthday parties for children. He plans to keep as many vegetables as he can in the shop. “It’s a wonderful way of life,” he says. “As long as we can produce a living for ourselves, we are very content with what we’re doing.”
JUNE 4, 2006
10 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
One is the loneliest number — sometimes
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hen I first meet someone, I’m often asked if I have any LEIA brothers or sisters. The answer is so robotic now I hardly think FELTHAM before saying, “Nope there’s just me.” Guest Column The typical response is, “Oh, you’re so lucky” or “Oh, you must be happy about that.” Behind a strained polite could be like for me, but I realize that smile I often find myself thinking those it’s not all wrestling matches. statements aren’t quite true. The relationship between brothers If you were the lone survivor in a and sisters seem to be the ultimate in plane crash that killed your friends and love/hate. I know people who can’t family, would you believe it if someone stand to be in the same room with their said you were lucky? Radically differ- sibling, but if even a mild threat is ent situations, I know, but the fact uttered against him or her, all hell will remains that it’s a matter of perspective. break loose. That kind of unspoken Stand in my shoes for a while and see if devotion is something to be envious of. they feel the way you thought they A sister or brother would be one of would. the few people who There have been times could truly underwhen I’ve considered stand the unique There’s no one to myself fortunate to be an and crazy inner only child, such as when point the finger at and workings of your a friend is stuck at home family. Like the say “he did it” when quirky problems babysitting on a Saturday night and I can that are the jokes of you do mess up. still go out. I’m sure that family sitcoms. friend would trade Then, in the end, Unless you have a places with me on that when you have to day. Yet I’ve never pet — but if it’s a fish face the inevitable imagined having a sibevent every child you’re screwed. ling would be a burden, does — the death of but rather one of those a parent — there’s unchangeable parts of someone there to life you learn to deal with. share your memories. Being an only I often wonder what it would be like child means facing that loss in a very to have a little brother or sister to fol- lonely way, and I feel that would be a low me around, clinging to my leg and great weight to bear. looking up with watchful, anticipating I’ll admit I’ve been pretty spoiled but eyes. I’m sure it’d get frustrating after a being an only child isn’t as easy as while and they’d be like a fly you can’t some make it out to be. There’s the swat away. inescapable feeling that all eyes are on Then there’s the thought of having an you, waiting to see if you sink or swim older brother or sister, always willing to because there won’t ever be any other offer a push when needed or a few child that’s drowning to distract parents words of wisdom learned from their and relatives from your own mistakes own mistakes. In between these pic- and failures. ture-perfect moments there will be the There’s no one to point the finger at battles for the shower in the morning or and say “he did it” when you do mess the car on a weekend. up. Unless you have a pet — but if it’s I’ve seen fights between brothers and a fish you’re screwed. sisters that have made me reconsider So am I lucky to be an only child? I ever having children, let alone more don’t think so, but I’ve never experithan one. Watching one sibling put the enced the alternative. As the saying other in a headlock until the one being goes, the grass is always greener, so choked gives in, which may never hap- what if you’re colour blind? You’d pen, and then they turn purple and pass never know the difference. I’ll just out. Later the disgruntled parents inter- enjoy the grass I was given. vene and try to understand how a dispute over the remote control could turn Leia Feltham is a Grade 12 student at into a life-or-death situation. None of Gonzaga High School in St. John’s. Her that glorifies what possible sisterhood column returns June 18.
Comprehensive Arts & Science College Transition Program Comprehensive Arts and Science (CAS) College Transition is a post-secondary certificate program designed for students who: • want to meet entrance requirements to a specific college program; • want to explore post-secondary career options; • want to learn more about studying at a post-secondary institution; • want to increase their level of education beyond high school and improve employability skills; • have graduated from high school or Adult Basic Education. Program courses include English, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Career Exploration, Critical Thinking, Effective Learning, Reading Comprehension, and more. Study full-time or part-time; choose to complete the full program or any courses that you may require. The CAS College Transition program is offered at Baie Verte, Bay St. George, Bonavista, Burin, Carbonear, Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Placentia, and St. Anthony campuses. Contact your local campus for more information.
We’re so much more. www.cna.nl.ca | 1 888 982.2268
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTNEWS • 11
SCATTERED PAST O’MARA PHARMACY MUSEUM 488 WATER ST., ST. JOHN’S Editor’s note: This is the first column in a new weekly series about the museums of Newfoundland and Labrador. By Nadya Bell The Independent
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Jane O’Mara
Pharmacy from the past The place is set up for business with a labeling box from Strapp’s Pharmacy in Harbour Grace, an assortment of pill shapers and moulds, and a suppository mould in the front window for shock value. The medicine bottles are the envy of anyone with a bit of pretty blue glass in their kitchen window, although most are filled with colouring, not
Assessing Churchill Questions arise over who will lead environmental probe; did Ottawa promise financial backing? By Craig Westcott The Independent
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s the province proceeds to go it alone on the lower Churchill hydro development, the question arises: will it also try going it alone on the environmental assessment that must precede the project? So far, the province isn’t saying. And according to the Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Corporation, a decision about which level of government will lead process has yet to be made. Ordinarily on a project the size of the lower Churchill, a bevy of federal and provincial agencies have to scope out and sign off on the environmental and other impacts associated with the work. Labrador MP Todd Russell is hoping the federal government, which normally takes the lead on overseeing environmental assessments of projects this size, does so in this case too. “I can only say that I’ve often found the federal process is more comprehensive in terms of its approach,” Russell says. “They’re also much more open to full consultation. I haven’t always been happy with them in the past, but generally speaking, the feds seem to have a better process.” Russell got an interesting answer when he raised a question about the project in the House of Commons two weeks ago. Russell says he inquired about Premier Danny Williams’ claim that Ottawa had promised to back the project with a federal loan guarantee. Instead, he got an answer concerning the environmental process. “The prime minister was going to get up and Loyola (Hearn) was going to get up, but Gary Lund, the Minister of Natural Resources, eventually answered the question,” Russell says. “And he didn’t make any reference at all to the loan guarantee, not one iota. All he said was, ‘We’re going to be there to help the province in terms of regulatory reform.’” Russell says he has written the minister asking for clarification. And he has spoken with Lund informally. Russell says it appears Ottawa intends to streamline the environmental assessment process. What exactly that means is unclear. “There’s no doubt the Innu Nation and the LIA (Labrador Inuit Association) and the Metis Nation have to be involved in this,” Russell says. “My sense is that this is going to have to be as broad and
Paul Daly/The Independent
comprehensive as possible to make sure it’s done right and to make sure that at the end of the day Labradorians benefit from this.” Russell is also expecting the two governments will have to strike a special panel to oversee the environmental assessment process as was done for the Voisey’s Bay nickel mine. But he has not been contacted by either level of government about the project. “The premier said to me just a week ago that he’s not concerned with political stripe,” Russell says. “And if he’s not concerned with political stripe, I would certainly like to have a call from him indicating what his plans are for the people who I represent here in Labrador. To me that’s only common sense and that’s only being respectful.” As for that strange response he received in Parliament two weeks ago, Russell seems to think it may have stemmed from the awkward fact the province does not have a financial commitment from Ottawa. “I think that there has been an impression left by the premier that the feds are going to be participating in this in a substantive way, through a loan guarantee primarily,” Russell says. “But from what I can understand from the Conservative government federally, they have made no such commitment in any way, shape or form … I get this funny feeling there hasn’t been much conversation around that piece whatsoever between the province and the feds.” A spokesperson for Williams rejected a request for an interview on the subject of the federal loan guarantee. Meanwhile, the province has moved to get some work done on the environmental assessment of the lower Churchill project. It has awarded at least four contracts for environmental studies, including a $205,200 study of the ice dynamics of the Churchill River, a $153,610 look at the river’s baseline water conditions and sediment quality, a $52,233 study of the abundance of fur bearing animals in the area, and a $30,350 examination of the seal population in Goose Bay and Lake Melville. On May 1, the province issued a request for proposals from companies interested in leading various components of an environmental assessment of the project. The deadline for bids was May 12. The province has not publicly indicated which companies will get the work. cwestcott@nl.rogers.com
the original chemicals. Every pharmacist in Newfoundland had their own personally labelled bottles, usually made in Milwaukee, N.J. They would package various pharmaceuticals and sell them to customers, and would mix up their own medicines from a recipe book. The ingredients were imported, mostly from
Apothecary Hall is owned and operated by the Newfoundland Pharmaceutical Association. Open to the public by appointment or 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily in July and August, (709) 753-587. Admission is free.
Have you noticed the benefits our oil and gas industry is bringing to Newfoundland and Labrador?
Growth in the construction and housing sectors.
Place Bonaventure, St. John’s, NL
ealy’s Pharmacy on the corner of Monroe and Casey Streets in St. John’s seems like a living relic. Biscuits in tins, a little hardware section, and aging bottles of God-knowswhat collecting dust next to the cans of potted meat. Of the small corner shops in old-time Newfoundland — the superette, the grocery and confectionary, and the simple “convenience” store — the pharmacy is the most curious. It seems odd the place boasting of farm eggs and the latest fads in chips and pop is also licensed to sell Codeine, Demerol and Oxycontin. Of course, in the 1800s anyone could walk into the druggist and, with a note from their parents and a few cents, take home whatever they pleased. Apothecary Hall at 488 Water St. is a sample of what the old pharmacies in St. John’s used to look like. Once a proper drug store — it opened in 1899 as the West End Drug Store, and continued on as the Peter O’Mara Drug Store from 1922–1986 — it has been restored with elaborate woodwork counters and shelves of bottles covering the entire walls. It looks a bit like a merchant’s living room with a very unusual china collection. It’s a far cry from the fluorescent-lit sterile aisles of today’s drug stores, with each product claiming to be cleaner than the next. Jane O’Mara owns and runs the museum today. Her husband, James J. O’Mara, was a third generation pharmacist who watched the transformation of the pharmacy from an alchemist’s laboratory to slick supermarket. During O’Mara’s lifetime, he collected anything he figured belonged in the old drug stores, setting the items aside to be preserved one day in a museum. Two years before his death in 1988, he opened his collection.
England, with the exception of cod liver oil that was produced in a number of different plants around the island. Brick’s Tasteless Cod liver oil was one of the most popular, while D. Templeman owned a cod liver oil plant in Catalina, and the Department of Health produced its own particular vintage. Even the recipe for Dr. Macpherson’s Newfoundland fly dope was one-quarter cod liver oil, mixed with some camphor and quinine. Over 20 active pharmacies in the early 1900s produced a vast array of different bottles that are perfect for anyone today with a fetish for a complete collection. John Wicks has been collecting Newfoundland bottles for 25 years. He has a photographed catalog of all of his bottles and hopes to one day have a bottle from every pharmacy in Newfoundland. Most drug bottles are small clear glass with the name of the pharmacy in raised lettering, with a cheaply made feel. A few drugs, including poisons, would come in their own bottles. At night in the dark, when you were looking for the right medicine in the wooden chest, the poison bottles were sharply textured of dark glass and couldn’t be mistaken. Some were shaped like coffins. But most of the drugs sold were fine to drink, being made mostly of alcohol. Nervilline or Perry Davis’s Pain Killer would cure anything if you had a little spoonful before dinner. A few lighter things were sold at the pharmacies then, like cards, theatre makeup or flavourings. Stafford’s and Sons essences of peppermint, pineapple or almond were used in custards, ice cream and cakes. Stanford Sr. had a bottling plant in downtown St. John’s, as well as being the manager of the Hotel Newfoundland. Jane O’Mara, John Wicks and a whole collection of old pharmacists will be at the Apothecary Museum on June 4 to look at old bottles and talk about the pharmacy profession in Newfoundland.
There has been a substantial number of new housing starts in the province because of oil and gas industry activity. That means new business for designers, builders, landscapers, decorators…. The list goes on and on. To learn more please visit www.capp.ca.
A message from:
403, 235 Water Street, St. John’s, NL Canada A1C 1B6 Tel (709) 724-4200
12 • INDEPENDENTNEWS
JUNE 4, 2006
LIFE STORY
Matinee Idol
St. John’s boy became toast of Broadway; appeared in play with Humphrey Bogart DENNIS O’BRIEN (A.K.A. DONALD BRIAN) 1875-1948 By Jenny Higgins For The Independent
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n 1894, a teenager from Newfoundland was tap dancing on the bustling sidewalks of Boston. The curly-haired dancer, who was waiting for his mother to emerge from a café, drew smiles from passersby and the attention of one man in particular who stopped in his tracks to watch. It was George M. Cohan, a then-superstar of the Broadway stage. Cohan, a veteran actor, singer, dancer, playwright, composer, director and producer, was no stranger to talent, but that day he took time out to introduce himself to the anonymous young man. The dancer was flattered, but his mother was not. She burst from the store, yelling “Get away!” to Cohan and scolding her son for talking to strangers. She began to lead her son away — by his ear — when the stranger again approached to properly introduce himself. He said he could make the boy a star on Broadway. This time, the mother realized who the man was and quickly gave her son permission to study with the famous entertainer. Just two nights later, Dennis O’Brien made his first appearance in one of Cohan’s shows. A few years later, under the stage name of Donald Brian, the teenager from Newfoundland made his Broadway debut and became one of New York’s biggest stars. Dennis O’Brien was born on Feb. 17, 1875 to Margaret Selby and Dennis Francis O’Brien, superintendent of the St. John’s Street and Bridge Department. The family of nine — O’Brien had six sisters and brothers — lived comfortably in a row house in downtown St. John’s that overlooked the harbour. At five years old, O’Brien had his first public performance at a concert sponsored by the Benevolent Irish Society in St. Patrick’s Hall. The boy was a hit and, from that day on, regularly performed at local musical events. O’Brien’s father died just one year later and his mother went to work for a St. John’s company that made women’s clothing. She worked long hours to support her seven children and, while waiting for her to get off work, O’Brien often fished in the harbour. Life continued this way for two years, until, at the age of eight, O’Brien became a soloist at a Catholic Church choir. The choir was a boon for O’Brien. While there, he met fellow singers Herbert O’Sullivan and William Ryan. O’Sullivan was a voice teacher and so impressed with O’Brien that he offered him free lessons. Ryan, who was the same age as O’Brien and became his best friend, had a father, Charles, who was in charge of a local dance school. O’Brien joined the school and took dance lessons every night until 1892. In 1893, at the age of 18, O’Brien and his family left their home in Newfoundland and moved to Boston for work. O’Brien’s mother had accepted a job offer from a friend who lived in Boston to work as manager of a clothing factory there. It was just one year later that O’Brien met George Cohan. In 1894, O’Brien began a two-year apprenticeship with Cohan’s company. He performed regularly on stage as part of the chorus, and spent a lot of time on the road. On Nov. 26, 1896, an excited 21-year-old O’Brien made his professional stage debut at Lawrence, Mass., while playing a major role in the musical show Shannon of the Sixth. He used the stage name Donald Brian for that show and for the many others that followed. By 1899, the young Newfoundlander was living in a $4 a week two-bedroom apartment just off Broadway. That same year, he also made his New York stage debut in On the Wabash. O’Brien continued to perform and receive kudos until, in the fall of 1907, he accepted the role that would make him a star — Prince Danilo in the musical comedy The Merry Widow at New York’s New Amsterdam Theatre. The show was a massive success. It ran for 69 weeks and O’Brien played the lead for a record-breaking 602 consecutive performances, becoming the most popular star on Broadway along the way. On opening night, he received a 10-minute standing ovation. It became impossible for him to walk down the street without being chased by fans. More than 10,000 women entered a contest to kiss O’Brien and, although still the early 1900s, it became commonplace for female fans to throw their underwear — embroidered with their names and telephone numbers — onto the stage.
Images courtesy of Charles Foster
In the following years, O’Brien appeared in 11 revivals of The Merry Widow. He also rubbed shoulders with the likes of Harry Houdini and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1926, to the chagrin of his female fans, O’Brien married Virginia O’Brien, a fellow entertainer who shared the stage with her husband in numerous shows. The couple had one daughter, Denise. In 1934, O’Brien starred in Cohan’s The Song and Dance Man, which also featured a then-unknown Humphrey Bogart in a small role. From 1939 to 1943, O’Brien appeared in 52 Hollywood films, but only in supporting roles. Sound — which is of no small importance to actors like O’Brien who depend on their voices — did not come to movies until late in O’Brien’s career, when he was too old to be considered an ideal Hollywood leading man. “My story is not of Hollywood, but Broadway,” O’Brien reportedly once said of his career. O’Brien left Hollywood and returned to New York, where he turned down an offer to reprise his role in The Merry Widow, saying that, at 68, he was too old. Instead, he opened a dance school in Long Island. Students came from all over the U.S. to study, but were never charged for tuition — O’Brien said he was giving back to the profession that had given him so much. O’Brien ran the school for the rest of his life and left money in his will to keep it open after he died. On the night of Dec. 22, 1948, O’Brien died in his own home at the age of 73. W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart and President Harry Truman all attended his funeral, and Broadway, to pay its respects, darkened its lights. After leaving his birthplace in 1893, O’Brien returned to Newfoundland only once, for his honeymoon in 1926. The trip was an emotional one for the Broadway star, who later told a New York Times reporter, “It was like returning to heaven.”
INDEPENDENTWORLD
SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, JUNE 4-10, 2006 — PAGE 13
Interim Liberal party leader Bill Graham
Chris Wattie/Reuters
Bystanders at best By Chantal Hébert Torstar wire service
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n politics, appearances are usually misleading. Take the case of Stephen Harper’s government. In theory, the prime minister leads one of the most fragile minority governments in recent history. From one day to the next, the Conservative regime is technically at the mercy of the opposition parties. The fact that Harper has so far managed to advance much of his agenda in spite of the mathematical inferiority of his party in Parliament has earned him much critical praise over the past few weeks. But in practice, the prime minister faces a nominal official opposition. It is hard to think of many governments that have enjoyed as free a ride at the hands of their main parliamentary critic as Harper’s. Certainly, no recent minority government has been at quite such an advantage. From the Conservatives’ perspective, the Liberal leadership campaign and the attending disintegration of the party as a force in the Commons is a gift that keeps on giving. On Tuesday, interim leader Bill Graham removed all would-be successors to Paul Martin from his party’s lineup of opposition critics for the duration of the leadership campaign. Until next year, a skeleton crew will be manning the Liberal fort in the Commons. But long before the Liberals scaled down their parliamentary team, it had become obvious that they will be relegated to the role of bystanders in some of the most pivotal debates of the coming year.
On issue after issue Harper gets free ride from disjointed Liberals The Federal Accountability Act: operating as it does under the cloud of the recent sponsorship scandal, the Liberal party is in no shape to offer a solid critique of the Conservative bill. There are grounds to find that the bill seriously overreaches its aim of a more ethical government. But the Liberal record on the issue is too much of a hindrance to make that particular battle one that the official opposition can wage with much credibility. The Afghan mission: last month, the party split publicly on a Commons vote on the government’s intention to extend the deployment for two years beyond next February. The interim leader supported the extension while the foreign affairs and defence critics voted against it. The divisions about the merits of Canada’s longterm presence in Afghanistan reach all the way up the leadership chain, rendering the party incapable of presenting a united front on what is currently the leading international issue for this country until the succession is resolved in December. The fiscal imbalance: for years when they were in power, the Liberals maintained that the notion that there was an imbalance between the revenues of the federal government and the bills of the
provinces was a figment of provincial imagination. Some of the leadership candidates still stick to that line. But others, including Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff, are of a different mind. As Harper and the premiers negotiate a new fiscal pact between now and the end of the year, the Liberals will be too busy haggling among themselves over their stance on the main federal-provincial issue of the day to have any significant input on the discussion. Democratic reform: Harper’s plan to limit the terms of future senators to eight years is now in the hands of the Liberal Senate. But no one can presume the outcome of the debate in the upper house as the Liberals are split over the merits of the idea. Earlier this week, Stéphane Dion included a proposal for a six-year limit on future Senate appointments in his leadership platform. Then, in the Commons last week, Graham huffed and puffed about the Conservative bill to bring in fixed election dates, claiming it did not really tie the hands of the prime minister. But he never said whether the party was for or against the fixed terms. On this issue, as on most others, there is no common Liberal position. What there is, though, is a growing Liberal sense that Harper’s move to set the date of future elections in law may offer the party a much-needed break. In so doing, the prime minister is foregoing the option to pull the rug from under the feet of a rookie Liberal leader by calling a snap election next spring, before the party has time to get its act together. Between now and then though, Harper has the Liberal leadership candidates stepping on each other’s toes as they try to dance to the tunes of his agenda.
VOICE FROM AWAY
Asking for freedom Local journalist Roger Bill remembers working in China the weeks leading up to the Tainanmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989 By Nadya Bell The Independent
W
hen Roger Bill arrived in Beijing in April 1989 to produce a radio documentary, he noticed a crowd gathering in Tiananmen Square. Seventeen years later, the journalist — now the editor of the St. John’s biweekly newspaper Current — recalls how he was witness to the beginning of mass demonstrations in China that were violently repressed on June 4, 1989. Bill was 44 years old at the time, with two young sons at home in Newfoundland.
While working for the CBC radio program Sunday Morning, Bill and fellow journalist Frank Koller travelled to Beijing to make two documentaries on China’s economy and previewing Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to the country. He arrived in Beijing in the middle of the night after four days of travelling. “I was struck by how dark this metropolis was,” he tells The Independent. “The boulevards were tree-lined, but there weren’t many lights.” To obtain a visa to China, visitors needed to be sponsored by a resident of the country. In Bill’s case, the host was
a Chinese government official, who also served as a translator. On the way to a banquet, Bill and his host family drove past a vast public square filled with people. Bill was told the people were gathered to mark the death of Secretary General Hu Yaobang, “since we mourn him.” “Nobody had any sense at this minute that it would become what it would become,” says Bill. Later that night, Bill went to the square with his tape recorder. He was surprised by how the demonstrators crowded around it to speak to him. “They understood how the mainstream media there was an insurance
“Nobody had any sense at this minute that it would become what it would become.”
Roger Bill policy,” he says. “Having the eyes of the world would give them some safety.” The students had taken advantage of Hu’s passing to congregate in the square
and speak about the political changes they wanted. While China had altered the economy significantly by allowing a free market, political reforms had not been made. The people in the crowd told Bill they were asking for freedom. When he asked them what freedom meant, they said: no corruption in the government. As he moved, the crowd parted and Bill was able to walk into the centre of the demonstration. “Crowds are different everywhere around the world — this was huge and tightly packed and quite polite.” See “The beginning,” page 15
JUNE 4, 2006
14 • INDEPENDENTWORLD
Attention Motorists
Construction of the Harbour Interceptor Sewer - Phase 1, will start along Harbour Drive on Monday, June 5, 2006. Construction will take place between Beck’s Cove and Baird’s Cove from June to August.
What is the Harbour Interceptor Sewer? The Harbour Interceptor Sewer is 2 km of 1650mm (5 foot) diameter trunk sanitary sewer pipe that is necessary to collect sewage that currently enters the harbour at the Temperance Street, Prescott Street, and other minor outfalls along Harbour Drive, and redirect it to the new Riverhead Wastewater Treatment Facility which will be constructed on Southside Road.
Will I be Able to Drive Downtown During Construction? Yes! However, there will be restricted access to Harbour Drive. Traffic will be reduced to one lane on Harbour Drive. Access to all parking facilities will be maintained. • Eastbound traffic will be maintained on Harbour Drive while westbound traffic will be detoured. • Westbound traffic that previously used Harbour Drive to access parking/drop-off in the vicinity of the Bowring Building, Atlantic Place, and Scotia Centre will be detoured via Water Street and Beck’s Cove. • Eastbound and westbound traffic that previously used Harbour Drive as a bypass is encouraged to use an alternate route. • Traffic volumes along other routes will be facilitated by advance signage and improved traffic signal operations.
Downtown is Open For Business! Access to all your favorite restaurants, stores and businesses will be uninterrupted during construction. Free parking is available in the City Hall Parking Garage evenings and weekends, except when there is an event at Mile One. Remember, parking meters are free after 6:00 pm weekdays and on weekends and holidays. For additional information contact:
The City of St. John’s Department of Engineering 10 New Gower Street, P.O. Box 908 St. John's, NL A1C 5M2 TEL: 709-754-CITY (2489) or visit our website at: www.stjohns.ca
This project is cost shared through the Canada Infrastructure Fund Agreement.
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTWORLD • 15
A man prays in front of an alter for the late former Chinese Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang during a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong, the only city in China where public mourning of Zhao is not banned, Jan. 21, 2005. A group of veteran China Communist Party members has urged the leadership to assure proper funeral honours for Zhao, purged as party chief in 1989 for sympathizing with the Tiananmen Square protests. Bobby Yip/Reuters
‘Beginning of a long occupation’ From page 13 At the centre of the crowd, demonstrators had climbed onto the Monument of the People’s Heroes. “If I’d jumped up and gotten on that rickety ladder I would have gotten great tape — but I didn’t,” Bill says. Turning to leave, he says the crowd started swaying back and forth, almost like a crowd at a hockey match. “I was jam packed in the crowd and it swept me off the ground, and I remember thinking: ‘Robert — if you fall here, you’re a long way from home.’” Bill and Koller worked all night to put together two radio pieces for CBC, but in 1989, getting a spliced tape recorder tape back to Toronto was a difficult task. They asked some Canada Pacific flight crew to act as a “carrier pigeon” and carry the tape back to Canada and send it by limousine to CBC headquarters. “I remember getting back to the hotel and calling Toronto and saying — listen, something’s happening here, we should change our plans,” he said. “We had this significant story before anyone else.” As the week went on, western reporters and residents who had lived through incidents of violent repression were expecting the government’s imminent crackdown. The Chinese government denounced the gathering as rebellious in The People’s Daily newspaper, and ordered them to clear out of the square for the funeral at 6 a.m., April 30. The Saturday night before the deadline, the crowd swelled in the square and Bill went down, despite warnings that it could turn violent. “I went to the square that night, and I wore my running shoes so I could run if I had to,” he says. All different groups, from students to labourers, were present as a show of defiance to the government’s orders. Plain and uniformed police men were obvious throughout the crowd that night. Walking back from the public bathrooms on one side of the square, Bill turned and saw a river of people flowing into the square carrying banners and signs. The flow continued all night, but he said at the time it was impossible to estimate how many people were there. Tiananmen Square covers just over 100 acres of land. “Daybreak came, and a couple of guards came out from the Forbidden City and unveiled several banners. A cheer came up from the crowd — they took it as an indication that they had called the government’s bluff. That was the beginning of a long occupation of the square.” Bill remained in China for a few weeks afterwards, traveling to similar protests in Shanghai, and visiting a Chinese journalist’s family in Hangzhou. When his documentaries were completed, Bill returned to Canada. Several journalists from CBC-TV had arrived to cover the protest through until its violent conclusion on June 4. On that day, tanks and infantry arrived to crush the protests, leaving hundreds dead and thousands more injured. Bill watched the massacre from home in Pouch Cove. “Corruption permeated China at every level. Part of what was going on in Tiananmen Square was trying to change that,” he says. “The state had a great chance to bring freedom and change, but they failed to do it.”
“The state had a great chance to bring freedom and change, but they failed to do it.” Roger Bill
JUNE 4, 2006
16 • INDEPENDENTWORLD
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INDEPENDENTLIFE
SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, JUNE 4-10, 2006 — PAGE 17
Dark with a heart
Top row, left to right: Aldous, Seymore Talkless, Charlie. Bottom row: Princess Lucy, Beasley and Byron, Sammy Fishboy, Armie and Brian Brain. Photos by Rob Brody
Newfoundlander Brad Peyton set to launch a CBC animation series about lonely freak orphans; working on three feature films CLARE-MARIE GOSSE
O
n June 26, Canadians will have a chance to get inside the head of Brad Peyton, the Gander native behind what could be the weirdest project CBC has ever commissioned. What It’s Like Being Alone is a darkly humourous animation series about lonely freak orphans, desperately trying to get adopted. The series, which is already scheduled for 13 episodes, is just the latest in a long line of Peyton’s creative successes over the last three years. The 26-year-old was plucked from relative obscurity by Tom Hanks in 2003 and is currently working on three major feature films, as well as the CBC show. Peyton says What It’s Like Being Alone’s cast of eight mutant orphans may be a representation of various parts of his own personality — a fact he hadn’t really considered until it was pointed out
by a friend. “It’s something I’m scared to engage actually,” he says over the telephone from Toronto. “A portion of my personality is like, a fat, warty, princess girl who throws up, you know, racoons and stuff. To think that I’m one-eighth that is frightening.” He adds “everyone has these sorts of parts, but they don’t talk about it much, they’re just like, ‘look at me, I’m normal.’” The “parts” in What It’s Like Being Alone include an alcoholic fish boy, a depressed Goth girl, a boy who keeps catching on fire, a walking brain, a two-headed baby, a one-armed boy with no legs, a one-eyed artist without a mouth and Princess Lucy — perhaps the strangest character of all. “She’s the most conflicted,” says Peyton. “She’s fat, disgusting, farts and burps and throws up flying pigs and yet believes the world absolutely revolves around her and that she is gorgeous. I think that most people really relate to Lucy because she’s so optimistic.” Peyton, who is often compared to Tim Burton (of Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride fame),
calls the show subversive, dark, funny and irreverent. But he also says it has a heart and should appeal to adults, teens and younger children on different levels. Peyton’s career took off shortly after graduating from the Canadian Film Centre in 2002. For his thesis project he wrote and directed an eightminute film called Evelyn: The Cutest Evil Dead Girl. The animation-style, live-action film (using real actors) is about a dead girl who gets lonely and decides to try and kill herself back to life to try to make friends with real girls. The short went on show at film festivals in North America, picking up several awards along the way and garnering the attention of executives at Hank’s production company, Playtone. Not long after, Playtone asked Peyton to give them a pitch on their own first animation project — an adaptation of Mary Howitt’s 1829 poem The Spider and the Fly. Peyton had no feature-film experience, but the production company loved his presentation and script pitch so much they immediately handed him a cheque and signed him up to co-write and direct.
Suddenly Peyton found himself working with Hanks. “It took me a year and a half to understand it was real,” he says. “There’d be people asking me, ‘So how does it feel?’ and I’d be like ‘I have no idea; I don’t know, man.’” He describes Hanks as “totally down to earth … one of the true, gentlemen celebrities.” Peyton is also co-writing Billy Grimm (a live action romantic comedy about the Grim Reaper) for Sony Pictures. With the two Los Angelesbased projects culminating, Peyton has decided to leave Toronto for a while and move temporarily to L.A. “I’ve been flying back and forth,” he says, “and it was just making me sick.” Peyton describes himself as “mostly a director” and says a lot of his ideas seem to spring from an innate, naïve place; he gets them out on paper and relies on a disciplined co-writer to help polish them. He seems to have a particular knack with poetSee “I don’t,” page 20
Boy in the body bag
Quebec artist Nicolas Fleming has his own way of exploring a landscape — and the results are on the walls of Eastern Edge Gallery By Jennifer Morgan For The Independent
N
icolas Fleming looks like a super hero. Clean-cut, six-foot-two, he has steely blue eyes and a square jaw. A nice boy from Montreal, Fleming speaks a slightly accented English in a gentle baritone. Like any super hero, Fleming has a job that must be done at great personal cost. And, in the super hero motif, Fleming’s work requires a special suit. Unfortunately things fall apart in the wardrobe
department. Dressed for work, our super hero looks more like a mummy escaping from a B-rated horror movie. In late May, the Quebec-based artist — encased from head to toe in a body suit that has no opening for him to see out or breath from — dragged his body over the War Memorial in downtown St. John’s, and around Cape Spear. Nicholas Fleming did not crawl blindly to his death at Cape Spear. He was guided by Eastern Edge Gallery’s director, Michelle Bush. “As a guide you feel the pain and how exhaust-
ing it is for him.” It sounds sympathetic, but Bush is laughing. “He kept getting stuck in brambles, and his breathing got heavier, his movements started slowing down.” A video documenting his crawl around the War Memorial shows Fleming dragging himself blindly through the gate behind the monument, over the sidewalk, and under an SUV parked on Duckworth Street. “I didn’t know it was a car,” Fleming says. “I assumed that if I went into the street she would stop me.”
Fleming’s guide that day, Marie-Suzanne Désilets, defends herself: “If a car came along I would have stopped it.” On the other extreme, out at Cape Spear on Thursday morning, Bush had been very protective. “Marie would let me go into the street,” Fleming says, “but at Cape Spear Michelle didn’t want me to get wet and uncomfortable when I approached a small pond.” “She stopped him when he was six feet from the See “It’s funny,” page 19
JUNE 4, 2006
18 • INDEPENDENTLIFE
GALLERYPROFILE
Photos by Paul Daly/The Independent
JASON HOLLEY
J
Visual Artist
ason Holley admits he’s “pretty obsessed” with the idea of chainmaille. Starting by making jewelry and moving on to clothing and sculpture, Holley has long been intrigued by the design possibilities offered by interlinking tiny metal rings. So intrigued that it was just a few days into his first ceramics course when he tried making thin rolls of clay, turning them into rings — and building structures from there. “Everyone went nuts over it,” Holley says. That was almost three years ago. Holley has now nearly perfected his “claymaille” techniques — and his first solo show is on display at the craft council’s annex gallery. Hanging on the walls, suspended from the ceiling, or sitting upright on stands and shelves, most of Holley’s clay pieces look at first glance like indestructible metalwork, woven and balanced in geometric patterns. But they’re made from clay, glazed and fired, and much more fragile than they appear. Unlike his work with metal — Holley buys precut rings from a wholesaler — each piece of clay is carefully made by hand. “It’s better than most of the repetitive things I’ve done,” says Holley by way of explaining his fascination with the process. “It’s repetitive, it’s calming, it’s predictable, it’s meditative, it’s all those things … “It’s very tedious work if you look at it that way, but I choose not to. I very rarely get frustrated with it.” Holley has gone out of the way to preserve the illusion of rigidity in his work. The clay has to be handled carefully, with special attention to timing — no fingerprints, “smushes” or other imperfections allowed. “The clay can’t be too soft, too dry or too wet,” he says. “You’ve only got five minutes or so to work the rings, they have to dry out a bit but not too much … the process is very demanding in order to be efficient, in order to not spend most of your time waiting for clay to dry.” There is some math, and plenty of trial and error, involved in creating the basic claymaille designs — and ensuring they survive the firing and glazing processes. But once the basics are sorted out, says Holley — “it’s repetitive enough so you learn these things without too much work” — the possibilities present themselves. Holley, who got his start making and selling hemp bracelets on the street five years ago, has been a full-time craftsperson ever since. He’s just completed the first year of the textile studies program at the Anna Templeton Centre and plans to eventually attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design for further studies in jewelry making and ceramics. Meantime, he’s working on a piece for the craft council’s upcoming members’ exhibition, and readying some of his chainmaille fetish wear for a fashion show in the summer. “I may have to show some other work sometime, before I become known only as the chainmaille guy,” Holley says, laughing. “But between hemp and beads and chainmaille I’ve been able to pay the rent for a while now … there’s a lot of sacrifice involved, but I like this too much not to make it full-time.” Claymaille is on display until June 17. — Stephanie Porter
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTLIFE • 19
Despite the hype, DaVinci Code just dull X-Men: The Last Stand Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, and Halle Berry (out of four)
S
ince our last visit with the XMen, it appears Professor Charles Xavier’s dream of acceptance and harmony between humans and mutants has taken a step in the right direction. Not only has a federal government come into power that is somewhat enlightened on the subject, but a mutant, Dr. Hank McCoy, has been appointed to a cabinet position. The progress is jeopardized, however, when a pharmaceutical company develops a serum that suppresses mutant genes. In heralding this new product, it is suggested mutants are individuals afflicted with a disease, which now can be cured — a concept that does not sit well with most mutants who are quite secure in their individuality. While Xavier persists in his efforts to enlighten people, his old friend and nemesis, Magneto, recruits mutants for a more radical response. It’s only a matter of time before Xavier and the XMen find themselves caught between Magneto’s militant forces and a human population with a renewed fear of mutants. With X-Men: The Last Stand, we find Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and Halle Berry (Storm) enjoying expanded roles, in a story that offers more action than the previous two X-Men films. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of the drama and character development that made the first two pictures connect with audiences. While the budget for this one is slightly larger than X2, inflated salaries and more special effects probably eat up most of this excess. What seems, on the surface, like an increased commitment on the part of the studio, really boils down to a necessary financial burden, an attitude that manifests itself throughout the film. They’re laying out the cash because they have to, not because they’re trying to improve on the previous films. This comes as no surprise, since shooting on this one began last year, when Hollywood was in an uproar about declining summer box office receipts, and consumed by the fear that audiences were lost forever. Compounding the atmosphere of corporate housekeeping that occasionally gets in the way, this third incarnation of the series obviously misses director Bryan Singer and his team, who have gone on to the new Superman film. Brett Ratner, best known for his Rush Hour pictures, sits in the director’s chair here, while only half of the writing team has had any experience with the franchise. The upshot of all this is that X-Men: The Last Stand is a good comic-book super-hero movie, but not up to the standard of its predecessors. X2 demonstrated that a sequel could be as good, if not better than the original, and fans hit the theatres in droves to see it. They showed up again this time around, ready for the same quality of entertainment, only to receive less than the studio’s best efforts. The DaVinci Code Starring: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou 1/2 (out of four)
The head curator of the Louvre is murdered, leaving behind a number of cryptic clues that sends Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), and police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) racing through the streets of Europe, trying to unravel the mystery. Hot on their heels is a determined police detective (Jean Reno) who is convinced Langdon is the per-
IN PRAISE OF PRATT
TIM CONWAY Film Score petrator. Meanwhile, the real killer, a monk (Paul Bettany) affiliated with a conservative branch of the Catholic Church, is attempting to head off our intrepid duo. He is acting under the direction of a powerful Archbishop (Alfred Molina), who is associated with a clandestine group zealously devoted to maintaining a secret that is as old as Christianity, a secret that unfortunately for Langdon and Neveu, lies at the end of their quest. HOLDING BACK Based on the popular novel by Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code is directed by Ron Howard from Akiva Goldsman’s screenplay. While both of these individuals have shown remarkable improvement in their respective fields over the last few years, this time around they seem to be holding back. The story offers more opportunity for tension and excitement than the film actually pursues, so we end up with a thriller that isn’t as thrilling as it could have been. The picture does offer numerous positive attributes, especially the sets and scenery, the occasional points of mystery, and the scattered car chase. The performances are capable, but there’s hardly a cast member who couldn’t be replaced by a dozen other, lesser-known actors who could turn out the same results. It seems as though the film-makers, in their attempt to smooth out the prickly patches in Brown’s story, applied the same process to everything else, resulting in a deliberately duller motion picture. So it is that all the fuss boils down to a better-than-average thriller, which is probably what most of the book’s readers had expected. Unfortunately, the mania that preceded the film’s release might have suggested something a little more substantial was at the centre of such attention. Nope, it’s just a novel that earned a lot of money, and made a number of statements that contradicted common knowledge. Considering how seriously this was treated, heaven forbid that Dan Brown’s next book should instruct people to jump off the end of a wharf.
Some 60 canvases by Newfoundland artist Christopher Pratt (above) are on display at The Rooms in a special retrospective exhibition. The show was organized by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa in celebration of the 70th birthday of one of the country’s most celebrated painters. The exhibition continues until Sept. 4. Paul Daly/The Independent
‘It’s funny to see what I miss’ From page 17 cliff,” complains Désilets. “I would have let him feel the edge.” Fleming laughs at concerns that someday his body suit may become a body bag. “It was fun,” says St. John’s artist Monty Hall, who videoed Fleming’s investigation of each site. “When he started crawling around the war memorial these teenagers were singing out ‘Weirdoes! You guys are Weirdoes!’” Bush says when he finished, some people clapped. “While I’m at the site I’m building an image in my mind,” Fleming says. Immediately after his investigation he was taken to a room where, with his suit off, he painted a landscape he had never seen. The results can be seen at the Eastern Edge Gallery until June 17. Fleming’s final installation includes two seven-foot suits, looming over monitors showing the videos, and two large paintings. The suits are stained with dirt from the ground he dragged himself over. Fleming’s paintings bear homage to
traditional landscapes with vertical horizons, blue skies and green grass. But he is more abstract expressionist than the Group of Seven. American abstract painter Jackson Pollock’s careful footwork and weaving arms, holding punctured cans of paint, were often described as a kind of choreography. “But all you have left in the end,” says Fleming of Pollock’s spatter paintings, “is paint that dries — just another still life. In the videos and with the suits, I share a part of my process. The process is just as important as the paintings. “I am aware that my paintings are not aesthetically attractive. I don’t think they work on their own.” In the Rogue Gallery — a room just to the side of Eastern Edge’s main gallery — Valerie Hodder’s show Awakenings resonates with texture and experiments with media. In contrast, Fleming’s colours are garish, his paintings blunt. It is Fleming’s process that engages, especially when the
viewer is familiar with the landscape. Imagine a painting of the War Memorial with no statues. On top of the memorial stands a woman holding a wreath and torch. But if you were blind, experiencing only what you could reach lying on your stomach, the actual tribute to dying soldiers is invisible. “It’s funny to see what I miss and what I go for,” Fleming says. “There’s an element of memory in the piece.” What Fleming remembers is an electrical panel to one side, which he investigated but forgot to paint. Standing at the War Memorial, maybe our blindfolded super hero is symbolic of every tourist. Don’t all visitors leave with a few impressions of things they touched? Don’t we all collect memories through the limitations of time and place, and then reconstruct our own pictures? It may not become a popular tourist package deal: “Come see St. John’s in a mummy suit.” But it does make you think.
Tim Conway operates Capital Video in Rawlin’s Cross, St. John’s. His column returns June 18.
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JUNE 4, 2006
20 • INDEPENDENTLIFE
The Dove of Ut-Napishtim The Independent’s book columnist, Mark Callanan, meets one of his literary heroes, Paul Muldoon Mark Callanan’s regular book review will return in two weeks.
passes “everything from rebel songs to rap”; it is not bound by traditional academic notions. I decided this was something I could definitely work with. I waited eagerly for the day of the convocation.
L
ast month, Irish poet Paul Muldoon was awarded an honourary doctor of letters degree at the Grenfell campus of Memorial University in Corner Brook for his contribution to Irish literature. Muldoon published his first collection of poems while still a young undergraduate at Queen’s University in Belfast. Since then he has published eight more collections of poetry, written a number of dramatic pieces and books for children, edited or introduced five anthologies, written three volumes of essays and criticism, and translated several works into English. Horse Latitudes, his 10th book of poems, is slated for publication later this year. Born in County Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1951, Muldoon now lives in the United States where he is a professor of humanities at Princeton University. He has won the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize and a Pulitzer. The Times Literary Supplement heralded Muldoon as “the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War.” For the last five years, Muldoon’s doorstop-sized Poems 1968-1998 has been a permanent fixture on my desk. So when I received an invitation to the recent convocation and saw his name on the bill, I got … well, giddy. And immediately set out to try to obtain an interview. The usual defense mechanisms of fame came into play. Faber and Faber, Muldoon’s UK publisher, directed me to Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the States. FSG remained ominously silent. Memorial University — bless its heart — graciously arranged a short email interview. I settled on six utterly inadequate questions — e.g., what is the role of poetry in contemporary society?; is the poet a creator or a conduit?; have you ever been to Newfoundland before? — sent them off and waited with bated breath. Two days went by, then a third. I considered taking my questions back and posing new ones. Another day went by. That night it all came to a head: my girlfriend threatened to take away my computer if I didn’t stop checking my mail every 10 minutes and
Paul Muldoon
come to dinner. I told her I’d eat as soon as Paul Muldoon answered. She told me Paul Muldoon wouldn’t write to me at all if I didn’t eat my dinner. I ate my dinner. Paul Muldoon didn’t write back. On the fifth day, demoralized, unkempt, not so much in the doghouse as in the wooden bin that houses our bags of garbage, I checked my mail again. Muldoon had answered. There was his e-mail address, denoting him as sender of the message that now bubbled and fizzed in my inbox, crackling with power. I opened it and began to read. And my heart sank. His responses ranged in length from one line to three. I don’t know what I had been expecting — brilliant questions, Mark; I’m glad someone has finally thought to ask them — but this clearly wasn’t it. So I sat on it for a few days and went back. And when I did, the answers had grown in their meaning and impact. “A poet is primarily a medium, though not a mindless one,” he wrote of the relationship between the poet and his work; “There has to be a perfect balance between knowing and unknowing, the conscious and unconscious. But great art gets made only out of humility.” On the relationship between poetry and song (in addition to his literary output, Muldoon composes lyrics and plays guitar for a “3-car garage rock” band called Rackett) Muldoon wrote: “As someone said, the poem has its own music, the song cries out for it. The two processes are connected, of course.” Poetry, says Muldoon, encom-
••• At the convocation Muldoon briefly addressed the assembly after the awarding of degrees. He then read aloud a poem, The Dove of Ut-Napishtim, originally composed for the 2005 graduating class of Stuart Country Day School in New Jersey. Beginning with an invocation of Auden’s commencement address to Harvard students — “Between the chances, choose the odd; / Read The New Yorker, trust in God; / And take short views…” — Muldoon’s poem springboards into a survey of the postmodern era and an exhortation to “ride roughshod / Over Auden’s adhortation… / To think short term.” The dove of Ut-Napishtim (the Sumerian version of the biblical character Noah) becomes a symbol of youthful innocence, exploratory ambition, and hope. “Poetry really has it in it to help us make sense of the world,” Muldoon had written in response to one of my questions. It helps us “to understand not only how it is, but how it might be.” Like the dove of Ut-Napishtim, poetry is a questing force in our world which brings us back the proof that, as Muldoon’s poem puts it, “for what it’s worth, / Life is sustainable on Earth.” ••• At a dinner the night before the convocation, I did have the opportunity to meet Muldoon. When I approached his table, he stood up to greet me. I introduced myself and shook his hand, joking that we had “an Internet relationship.” He smiled politely and asked me about my article. I told him I had been waiting to meet him before I wrote it. Then I gave him a book that a friend of his in St. John’s had entrusted me with delivering. It felt a little like presenting a teacher with a burnished apple in front of the rest of the class — an act laden with both the enjoyment of duty discharged and the discomfort of appearing sycophantic. He was quite gracious, thanking me profusely. At the time, I had wanted to say something terribly intelligent, something to distinguish me from everyone he’d met. Instead, I barely managed what you’d call a conversation as I absent-mindedly calculated how long I could delay washing the hand he’d shaken. So I retreated, wishing him well on his trip and promising to convey his regards to the friend in St. John’s. As the crowd of diners began to thin out, I hung around chatting with some of the other remaining guests. I drank an Irish whiskey and thought about the perfect opening line. Then I went to the bathroom and washed my hands. Mark Callanan’s column returns June 18. He can be reached at callanan.mark@gmail.com.
‘I don’t like taking anything for granted’ From page 17 ry. On the same day as his interview with The Independent, Peyton signed on to co-write and direct a feature movie with a company in Toronto. The meeting switched focus when he brought up a 12-page poem he had written just two days ago, inspired by a fairy tale that reminded him of an incident at junior high. What It’s Like Being Alone was born in a similar way, after he went over to a depressed friend’s house to try and cheer her up. “I thought, I can’t sit here and let her drink all day, so I was just like, ‘why don’t we draw?’ So I was just drawing and in that one day I wrote and illustrated this kids book and it was: ‘What it’s like being alone. It’s like a sunset, but only if you’re on fire. It’s like your birthday, but only if you get a jar full of mire.’” Peyton went on to make photocopies of what he calls “this little Edward Gorey (American illustrator with a macabre style) inspired rhyming book.” It sold 200 copies at an independent bookstore in Toronto. As luck would have it, Fred Fuchs — at the time a producer for Francis Ford Coppola and now CBC’s new executive director of arts and entertainment — saw it and called Peyton up for a lunch date. He proposed turning the idea into a TV show and to everyone’s complete surprise, CBC, looking for something fresh, jumped on board. The show uses traditional, stop-motion animation with figurines and some computer graphics, so production is time-consuming and labour intensive. Peyton says it takes three weeks of constant shooting with eight cameras to film just one episode. But it’s worth it. “It’s beautiful,” he says. “It’s very kind of dream-like.” Growing up in Gander with a “blue-collar” family, living in a house beside a highway surrounded by woods, Peyton says he led a somewhat reclusive childhood — lots of wandering, imagining and drawing. “There’s a certain surrealism to Gander because I felt like I was living in the middle of nowhere.” He remembers himself as a nerd with a long-term girlfriend who floated through his teenage years like a cloud in a snow globe,
taking in the world around him and making notes. “I was a pretty sensitive kid, I think. I didn’t like engaging the world because I thought it probably had too many sharp edges.” He likens the desolate, open landscape in What It’s Like Being Alone to Newfoundland, his ultimate home. “My girlfriend’s cat died and I had this weird sensation … at the end of the day you need somewhere to go, and I think that Newfoundland is that place for me, it will always be that place for me.” He recalls spending childhood summers in Twillingate, walking along trails or fields and suddenly stumbling across something out of place, like a house in the middle of a clearing. “That kind of discovery sensation … I’ve never been able to remove myself from that sensation, that’s the kind of thing I’m holding onto, trying to see new things through new eyes as much as possible. That’s why most of my stuff is bent towards fantasy.” Ultimately Peyton seems to need to care about his characters and stories, in order for them to work. He says he’s not poking fun at the odd orphans in his TV show — many of his best friends are what he says some people might dub “weirdoes,” but he finds them the most inspiring. Peyton has his fingers crossed for What It’s Like Being Alone, although he admits he has no idea what people will make of it. “Everyone in Newfoundland should turn on their TVs — even if they’re not watching them — on Mondays at 9:30 (EST),” he laughs. Some might compare Peyton’s charmed career to a fairy tale, but he says he worries it could all fall away. “I don’t like taking anything for granted … I feel there’s a lot of people out there that are more talented than me and can do 10 more different jobs than I can do, but I think I’m just very persistent and very determined to make stuff. “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have that opportunity. I just have no idea what I would be doing every day.” What It’s Like Being Alone debuts locally June 26 at 11 p.m. on CBC-TV.
INDEPENDENTBUSINESS
SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, JUNE 4-10, 2006 — PAGE 21
Carlos Barria/Reuters
Cooke dives in
Province expects fish farming to spawn hope for economically troubled south coast By Craig Westcott The Independent
C
ooke Aquaculture’s establishment of a salmon farming operation south of Belleoram in Fortune Bay bodes to be just the start of a wave of aquaculture investment on the south coast. Cooke’s farm at Boxey Harbour is the first of three salmon growing operations the New Brunswick-based company intends to start on the south coast. It’s also looking at the area’s cod farming potential and at other possible aquaculture sites in the province. It’s a risky venture, but one the company and the provincial government hope will pay off. Acting Innovation, Trade and Rural Development Minister Trevor Taylor is confident the Connaigre Peninsula, which includes beleaguered Harbour Breton, has a strong future in fish farming. “The reality is, this place has got a great future,” says Taylor, while allowing things do look bleak now.
Ironically, it was Taylor who, as the PC government’s new Fisheries minister nearly three years ago, spurred the provincial government’s push to promote aquaculture on the peninsula. The Connaigre area was already seeing substantial investment in aquaculture by a private company, North Atlantic Sea Farms Corporation. Its farm, which a salmon processing plant, has since been acquired by the Barry Group. The emergence of big commercial companies in the province’s aquaculture industry is finally giving the Newfoundland industry strong growth potential, say veteran observers such as Mike Rose. The former executive director of the Newfoundland Aquaculture Industry Association, who now oversees aquaculture operations for the Barry Group, says the industry had been lacking large sums of private capital. “I believe, and this is nobody’s fault by the way, but back in the 1980s through the 1990s, there was a sense that aquaculture
could grow in Newfoundland through mom and pop-style operations,” Rose says. “And I believe we’ve learned, perhaps the hard way, that that doesn’t work … where we have seen aquaculture grow in other countries it’s been after some serious amounts of private capital have come in and developed the right infrastructure.” Cooke Aquaculture is building the first farm completely on its “own steam,” says company spokesperson Nell Halse from her office in New Brunswick. But the company isn’t ruling out the possibility it will look for government help down the road. Cooke is one of the biggest and most aggressive aquaculture companies in Canada, and is fully integrated. It builds its own cages, has a subsidiary that transports the product, another that produces salmon feed, and even has a company that sells industry-related clothes to aquaculture workers. Cooke doubled the size of its workforce last year to 1,100 workers when it bought Heritage Salmon from George Weston Ltd.
The provincial government, too, has grown serious about the industry’s potential, setting aside $4 million in this year’s budget to help the industry, including $500,000 towards construction of an experimental cod farm. Cooke hopes to have its first salmon smolts in the water this spring and the first commercial harvest in 18 to 24 months. “The first equipment arrived last week in Belleoram and we’re hiring people to help set up the first farm. That’s underway now,” Halse says. “We have done some interviewing also to prepare a list of eligible employees for when we are ready to actually start farming.” Halse won’t say how many people will work on the farm, or specify where the other two farms will be located. Neither can she say where the fish will be processed. “We don’t know that yet,” Halse admits. “Certainly we want to process them in Newfoundland and we’re looking right now See “A rough row,” page 23
Time for the NDP to grow up
S
he’s intelligent, articulate and committed to making the world a better place to live. But can the new leader of the NDP get elected? It’s the first challenge Lorraine Michael is going to face with a byelection expected in Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi this fall. She also has to grapple energetically with the challenge of building a party organization throughout the province so that New Democrats can wage war at the polls 17 months from now. Because the truth of democratic politics is this: you can be the best person for the job, but it doesn’t mean diddly if you haven’t got the apparatus in place to get elected. Just ask Jack Harris. For years, the NDP was little more
CRAIG WESTCOTT The public ledger than a party in name only. With Harris as leader, it had someone who was smarter, better-spoken and more adroit at waging debate in the legislature than just about anyone. But without the machinery of a party to support him, his chances of becoming premier were always nil. He was one of the best premiers we never had. So Michael’s real task is to convince party supporters that they have to buck up and accept democratic politics for what it is — a contest. It’s a kind of war, but without the casualties. It involves logistics, organization,
preparation, timing, commitment and strategy. There’s more to winning an election than persuading people that you are better than your rivals. Until now, the NDP has been content to serve as the conscience of the Newfoundland body politic. Not a big conscience mind you, given the party’s numbers. But really that position was just a cop-out. So is the denial by some of the party’s executive in the past that it is little more than a conglomeration of special interest groups based in St. John’s. Such a position is simply ignoring both the reality of the party and the public’s perception of it. If NDP “power brokers” want their party to ever acquire power, they have to show some selflessness and open the organization to social democrats and left-
leaning people throughout the province, whether they are affiliated with special interest groups or not. Especially if they’re not. To succeed, the NDP has to be more than a collection of the leadership of a few unions, labour councils, women’s groups and gay and lesbian organizations. It’s likely that many people would like to find a place inside the NDP’s tent, but feel they are unwelcome. Jack Harris offered an inclusive outlook, but the party failed him. It will be harder for Lorraine Michael to pull it off, but she must try. Realistically, the NDP has no hope of forming the next government, or even the Opposition. But if it starts to organize properly this time, builds district associations throughout the province, identifies and maintains lists
of supporters, recruits sensible candidates and uses all that to lay a base, it may have a future. The key in the interim is for the party workers to not lose hope and slip back into the familiar and easier role of being the well-meaning also-rans. Because right now the NDP is very frail. As one reporter joked last week after taking in the party’s convention, “It was like watching a train wreck — if the train was full of hemp.” New Democrats have good ideas and even better ideals. We need their contribution. It’s a shame that until now the party’s organizers and supporters haven’t taken politics seriously enough. It falls on Lorraine Michael to insist that the NDP finally grows up. cwestcott@nl.rogers.com
A stunning collection of photography from the portfolio of The Independent’s own Paul Daly. Available this summer. To preorder your copy, contact Boulder Publications at 895-6483.
22 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS
BEER DAY
JUNE 4, 2006
Mission not accomplished Tinkering with FPI Act failed to address real problems, says analyst; competitors should be prevented from sitting on board holders from acting in concert and taking over the company. However, it failed to stop Risley, Bill Barry, Icelandic Seafood Corporation and New he provincial government’s changes to the Zealand-based seafood company Sanford Ltd. FPI Limited Act won’t rein in the board of from pulling off a hostile takeover of FPI five directors or address the company’s funda- years ago. Barry later sold his shares in FPI, but is now in mental problems, says a veteran business analyst. “My impression was it was pretty weak in negotiations to buy the company’s Newfoundland terms of what they brought forward,” says Bruce groundfish and shellfish primary assets. Keating says a tighter ownership cap and a proKeating, who has worked as a business advisor for the past 13 years to clients including hibition against competitors sitting on FPI’s board ChevronTexaco, Ford, Philips and Heineken. “I would have sparked real change inside the company and given it a good foundation. don’t think it’s going to have any big impact.” The other thing the government failed to Since returning to Corner Brook from the United Kingdom, where he worked as a mergers address, the analyst notes, was FPI’s $300-million and acquisitions advisor with the Ernst & Young debt. “In my view, the government needs to move consulting group, Keating has made a close study on that,” Keating says. “Maybe they are behind the of FPI Ltd. scenes, but I’m not aware of it.” Under the changes adopted Meanwhile, Keating says it’s last week, FPI will have to “It’s not difficult to unclear how serious Premier expand its board to 13 members, Williams is about unitensuring a majority are find more like-minded Danny ing some of the players in the Newfoundland residents. Newfoundland fishery to buy The board is controlled now people out there. FPI’s United States marketing by a competitor of FPI, John arm, Ocean Cuisine Risley, of Clearwater Seafoods. It’s not going to do International. Risley is based in Nova Scotia a great deal to make “There is a view that if that’s but keeps a residence in a posh where his mind is, letting Bill condominium in downtown St. the board a more Barry carry on with negotiaJohn’s. for the primary group All Risley will have to do to independent board.” tions makes some sense,” Keating maintain control of the board notes. “It’s a question of how and comply with the law, Bruce Keating serious Williams actually was Keating says, is recruit a few about that. If he wasn’t serious more local bodies. Of the seven about it, then I would question people on the board now, four of them are Newfoundlanders. According to the why he would let the Barry discussions carry on. company, all board decisions have been unani- That’s the only scenario I could see where any deal between FPI and Bill Barry would be acceptmous the past few years. “It’s really not going to have any material able.” Keating also dismisses Williams’ contention change on how FPI is run,” Keating says. “It’s not difficult to find more like-minded people out that any tinkering by government into the way there. It’s not going to do a great deal to make the FPI is run would hurt the province’s image in the board a more independent board. It’s not going to business community at large. The premier’s argudo much to dilute the influence of John Risley ment also runs counter, Keating says, to his actions on offshore oil, where he is trying to get and those guys.” Keating says the government should have an equity stake in the Hebron-Ben Nevis oil field, adopted the Opposition’s proposed amendment, and at Newfoundland Hydro, where he is turning which would have barred any competitor, suppli- the company from a government utility into a er, or customer from sitting on FPI’s board of commercial energy company. “The spirit of what he’s saying, I understand directors without the approval of both the board that,” Keating says of the premier’s FPI arguitself and the provincial government. Given his own experience with corporate gov- ment. “But FPI does exist and is accountable to ernance, working on behalf of large corporations, the legislature. Williams could say ‘Let it be run Keating says the Liberal’s proposal was a sensible on a commercial basis, we will stand back and rescind the FPI Act and let it run as any other suggestion. One of FPI’s key problems, he adds, is the pres- commercial enterprise does.’ He hasn’t done that ence of its competitors on the board of directors. and if you’re not going to take that decision, then “I think it still flies in the face of sound gover- the obligation is, how do you make this corporanance, the idea you can actually let a competitor tion work on a commercial basis and from a polisit on the board,” Keating says. “You wouldn’t cy perspective for the government? And if you see somebody from Toyota sitting on Honda, you look at the last five years, it hasn’t worked on either basis.” wouldn’t see it in most other industries.” Keating says the province should have acted Keating says the province should also have prohibited any investor from owning more than long ago to stop competitors from serving on 10 per cent of FPI. Currently, the limit is 15 per FPI’s board. “And if the company itself wasn’t prepared to cent. “Right now there are four shareholders that put those kinds of restrictions in place, the govhave maybe 55 per cent,” Keating says. “If you ernment would be entirely justified in stepping brought that down to 10 per cent, then you would in,” Keating says. “I don’t think that’s tinkering. People would need at least five shareholders to get 50 per cent.” And if Williams wanted to be really “cheeky,” take exception to it, like John Risley, but I don’t says Keating, he could have limited shareholders think that anyone could make a strong case that to owning no more than 9.99 per cent of the com- that’s actually being unfair to the company or is pany. That way it would take at least six share- compromising the company’s ability to operate effectively.” holders to exert control. The 15 per cent limit was adopted in the original FPI Limited Act to stop any group of sharecwestcott@nl.rogers.com
By Craig Westcott The Independent
T
Despite the drippy spring weather, two press conferences gave the summer patio season a publicity push on June 1. At West Side Charlies on Water Street (top photo), Gary Hickey, provincial sales manager for Labatt Breweries and Wade Gravelle, vice-president of West Side Charlies, enjoy the first bottle of Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale — the popular Nova Scotia-based beer — sold in Newfoundland. At the Quidi Vidi Brewing Co. (bottom), president David Rees announced a partnership between the brewery and the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC). Over the next three years, Quidi Vidi will launch six labels featuring endangered species from Newfoundland and Labrador. Fifty cents from each two-pack sold will be donated to the NCC. Paul Daly/The Independent
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTBUSINESS • 23
Bay Street, Toronto.
Andy Clark/Reuters
Toronto office costs rival Manhattan
I
s Toronto on the verge of becoming the next Manhattan for pricey office space? Toronto, for the first time, is within striking distance of New York when it comes to the cost of office space, thanks to the seemingly unstoppable rise in the Canadian dollar and a robust local economy. Toronto leapt 16 places in the rankings of world occupancy costs — the most ever — to 32nd from 48th last year, according to a CB Richard Ellis survey released last week. That means companies looking to invest in Canada’s largest city may think twice before setting up shop. “It really was the perfect storm,” says Ray Wong, director of national research for CB Richard Ellis, says. “Not only is the vacancy rate declining significantly, but the Canadian dollar was also on a tear.” It now costs $50.47 (all figures are in US dollars) per square foot a year to maintain an office in Toronto, up from $37.71 last July. Manhattan, the most expensive market in North America, now costs a mere 9 per cent more per square foot than Toronto at $55.15. A year ago, the difference was more than 40 per cent. “Toronto has had a very healthy recovery,
and we are seeing a shortage of large blocks of space, and good demand in prime locations,” Wong says. Last July, the Canadian dollar averaged 81 cents (US), compared with almost 91 cents today. But a strong dollar doesn’t entirely explain the huge increase. A strong economy has helped office vacancy rates in the downtown core plunge to 6.8 per cent at the end of March from 8.9 per cent at the same time last year. Wong says rents in the Toronto financial district have increased 10 to 15 per cent year over year. He expects another 5 to 10 per cent by year’s end. His company’s survey looked at prime office space in cities around the world, tracking prices from July 2005 to the end of March 2006. Since then, the Canadian dollar has increased even more compared with the greenback, and some analysts forecast the loonie will be even higher by this time next year, pushing Toronto further up the rankings. “Companies will have to make a judgment call,” says Wong. For businesses needing to establish a presence in the financial core, there will be no choice. “You will have to
pay the premium.” Still, real estate costs are just one factor in a company’s decision, he said. Access to skilled labour, quality of life and location are some of the other key elements. Thanks to the oil and gas boom, Calgary, rather than Toronto, may be the first Canadian city to become more expensive than Manhattan, according to CB Richard Ellis. Calgary, which boasts the lowest downtown vacancy rate of any Canadian city at 1.2 per cent, has leap-frogged 20 spots, to 35th place in the rankings with an occupancy cost of $46.83 per square foot. CB Richard Ellis forecasts Calgary will soon surpass Toronto as the most expensive city in Canada. “With the expected continued growth in Calgary, in the short term Calgary rents could approach those of mid-town Manhattan,” said the report. London’s West End, followed by Tokyo, remained the two most expensive places to do business in the world, according to the rankings. — Torstar wire service
‘A rough row to hoe yet’ From page 21 at all the options, whether we would acquire an existing fish plant, or one that’s not being used, or whether we would build a plant.” Cooke Aquaculture is considering using the fish plant owned but now mothballed by FPI in Fortune. One thing that is certain, says Halse, wherever the plant is located, it will be a year-round operation. “We’ve been farming (in N.B.) for 20 years and have a very successful operation in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and in Maine. So what we would want to do is have the economies of scale and enough fish to run through the plant so that you could keep it going year-round. It’s not viable otherwise.” Under provincial regulations, any company starting a salmon farm in Newfoundland and Labrador has to open three sites. That enables the operator to always have a harvest of fish ready for processing.
Taylor says the expansion of fish farming on the Connaigre Peninsula will bring spinoff and associated industries. “We’re at 5,000 tonnes of production down there now,” he says. “We could conceivably in 10 years be at 40,000 or 50,000 tonnes of production … and if you do that, there’s a whole bunch of stuff you need, because the majority of people in southwest New Brunswick are not working feeding fish. They’re working in diving companies and feed companies and the service industry for the aquaculture industry.” LONG TERM NEEDS Taylor says the role for the rural secretariat for that region will be to figure out what government infrastructure is needed for the long term. “They’re going to be all right,” Taylor says of the people on the Connaigre Peninsula. “But they’ve still got a rough row to hoe yet.” Taylor points to an e-mail he received from
a feed company that explored the area last year by helicopter. “They talked about what we have and what we don’t have,” says Taylor. “And what we have is a strong and dedicated workforce, which they have great difficulty accessing over in the in Bay of Fundy right now. We have great (water) temperature profiles, we have lots of space, we have site separation, we have a good regulatory regime, and the last one, I believe they said, is we have a positive government. “(What) we don’t have is 40-foot tides, we don’t have infectious salmon anemia, we don’t have crowding — a bunch of stuff like that … that’s why Cooke Aquaculture is down in Boxey right now building a pile of cages. And that’s why Bill Barry is there. Bill Barry is no fool. He didn’t buy into the aquaculture industry last year to lose a pile of money.” cwestcott@nl.rogers.com
24 • INDEPENDENTBUSINESS
JUNE 4, 2006
WEEKLY DIVERSIONS ACROSS 1 Beach acquisition 4 Grain husks 9 Motel features 12 Firewood measure 14 N.B. town with “world’s largest lobster” 16 Swift 19 Twiggy digs 20 Rhythmic flow of sounds 21 Useful 22 WWW address 23 Small shoots 25 French pronoun 27 River to the Irish Sea 28 The ___ Reaper 30 Prepare for “O Canada” 31 Western tie 32 Long-running quarrel 33 Whenever 35 They want to right social wrongs 37 Aussie hopper 38 Small boat 40 Cob of corn 41 Word of mock dismay 45 Nigerian people 46 Nom de plume 50 Nanking nanny 51 Back on board
53 Bats’ droppings 55 Needle-nosed fish 56 Our Z 57 Mark a ballot 59 Custard pie 60 Yoko ___ 61 Self 62 Astonish 64 Fish eggs 65 Cousin of ave. and blvd. 66 Oil from wool 68 Notch 70 Do surgery 73 Surrey summer time 74 Finch food 76 Outer: prefix 77 Toy 80 N.S. mystery ship: Mary ___ 84 Winnie the ___ 85 Right on most maps 86 Win, to a dieter 87 Fall mo. 89 Possess 90 Mine entrance 91 Drunk 93 Carnival city, for short 94 Automobile 96 Any part of the face 98 Expel 100 Eat away 101 Indict 102 Relieves
103 At the present time 104 Small loose stones 105 Scandinavian rug DOWN 1 Lake SE of Whitehorse 2 Oils and such 3 Loch ___ 4 French chairs 5 Barrier of bushes 6 Summer coolers 7 Fish appendage 8 Hockey play start 9 Faithful 10 Brewer’s vessel 11 2002 Cronenberg film 12 Like a bug in a rug 13 ___ firma 14 Theatrical drop 15 Ofra Harnoy’s instrument 17 Intestinal obstruction 18 Action 24 Earlier 26 Singer McKennitt 29 A gift of the Magi 31 Obscure 32 Green plant 34 Also 35 Chest bone 36 First woman in NHL: ___ Rheaume 39 Beaver or fox young
41 Hurricane that hit Toronto in 1954 42 Last Greek letter 43 Radioactive gas 44 Devil 46 Archaic: prefix 47 Greek marketplace 48 French painter 49 Unevenly worn 52 Turkish headwear 54 ___ Data Centre and Landing Pad, St. Paul., Alta. 57 Canadian folksinger 58 Left out 63 Party, e.g. 64 Blush colour 65 Cranky 67 Moonfish 69 Brain test, briefly 71 National Park on L. Erie: Point ___ 72 Devon river 74 The Brontes, e.g. 75 Flagellate 77 The ___ and the Glory 78 City with most thunderstorms 79 Israeli seaport 81 German city 82 Stratas of opera 83 Spice (Fr.) 84 Adopt an attitude 86 Canadian composer
Alexina ___ 88 Small children 90 Freshly
91 Zubenelgenubi, e.g. 92 Sask.’s animal emblem: white-tailed
___ 95 Flap 97 Rainbow shape
99 B.C.’s official bird: Steller’s ___
WEEKLY STARS ARIES (MAR.21 TO APR. 19) Lots of possibilities begin to open up by midweek. Some seem more appealing than others. But wait for more facts to emerge later on before you consider which to choose.
CANCER (JUNE 21 TO JULY 22) Your keen Cancerian insight should help you determine whether a new offer is solid or just more fluff ‘n’ stuff. The clues are all there, waiting for you to find them.
LIBRA (SEPT. 23 TO OCT. 22) Expect to hear good news about a loved one. Also, be prepared for some changes in several family relationships that could develop from this lucky turn of events.
CAPRICORN (DEC. 22 TO JAN. 19) A workplace goal that suddenly seems out of reach is no problem for the sure-footed Goat who moves steadily forward despite any obstacles placed in his or her way.
TAURUS (APR. 20 TO MAY 20) Bravo to the determined Bovine. While others might give up, you continue to search for answers. Expect your Taurean tenacity to begin paying off by week’s end.
LEO (JULY 23 TO AUG. 22) Being ignored is difficult for any proud Leo or Leona. But pushing yourself back into the spotlight might be unwise. Instead, let things work themselves out at their own pace.
SCORPIO (OCT. 23 TO NOV.21) Some surprises are expected to accompany a number of changes that will continue through part of next week. At least one could involve a romantic situation.
AQUARIUS (JAN. 20 TO FEB. 18) Uncertainty about who is right and who isn’t might keep you from making a clear-cut decision. Wait until you know more about what you’re being asked to decide.
GEMINI (MAY 21 TO JUNE 20) You might want to consider stepping back from the task at hand for a while. This could help you get a better perspective on what you’ve done and what still needs to be done.
VIRGO (AUG. 23 TO SEPT. 22) Trying to uncover a colleague’s secret under the pretext of showing concern is ill-advised. Control your curiosity in order to avoid raising resentment in the workplace.
SAGITTARIUS (NOV. 22 TO DEC. 21) You might be upset by some of your critics. But most of your associates continue to have faith in your ability to get the job done, and done well.
PISCES (FEB. 19 TO MAR. 20) Be careful to keep your emotions in check when dealing with a demanding personal situation. You need to set an example of strength for others to follow.
YOU BORN THIS WEEK: You have an extraordinary ability to rally people to do their best. You would be a treasure as a teacher.
Fill in the grid so that each row of nine squares, each column of nine and each section of nine (three squares by three) contains the numbers 1 through 9 in any order. There is only one solution to each puzzle. Solutions, tips and computer program available at www.sudoko.com SOLUTION ON PAGE 30
JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTSPECIALSECTION • 25
26 • INDEPENDENTSPECIALSECTION
JUNE 4, 2006
JUNE 4, 2006
Ask the other guys how works. Then, come ask us. We’ll give you the real answer!
INDEPENDENTSPECIALSECTION • 27
28 • INDEPENDENTSPECIALSECTION
JUNE 4, 2006
MAY 7, 2006
INDEPENDENTSPECIALSECTION • 29
30 • INDEPENDENTSPORTS
JUNE 4, 2006
U.S. ratings fiasco looms
T
he Edmonton Oilers are in the Stanley Cup final and that can mean only one thing: great ratings for the CBC. When Calgary made the final last time around, audiences more than doubled and CBC recorded its highest Stanley Cup audiences since the ratings system went electronic in 1989. “We’re very happy,” says CBC senior executive Joel Darling. “With Edmonton’s long history of winning and the fact they’re such underdogs, this could be a better story than Calgary.” The prospects of setting another ratings record even overshadow the CBC’s disappointment at having to sit out another Saturday night and wait until Monday for the final to open, mainly to appease the folks at NHL headquarters and NBC. While there was some consternation that the NHL is again catering to American interests, the fact is the league has no choice. The CBC doesn’t need much help in attracting hockey audiences; NBC needs every break it can get.
While CBC is barely able to contain its enthusiasm, the folks at NBC and the NHL have to be dreading the final match-up. There’s a good chance this series could score the lowest prime-time ratings in U.S. television history. That dubious distinction belongs to the XFL, which once brought a 1.6 prime-time rating to NBC. The reasons for that possibility are legion. First, Carolina is among the smallest markets in the United States, so even strong local interest won’t boost ratings. Second, most Americans couldn’t find Edmonton on a map, and many would have trouble finding Canada. Third, NHL ratings in the U.S. have been in free fall since 2002 and the current TV configuration is doing nothing to prevent that from turning into a death spiral. NBC’s last playoff broadcast on May 20 was beaten by the likes of beach volleyball and poker. — Torstar wire service
Solutions for crossword on page 24
Solutions for sudoku on page 24
Paul Smith photo
King of the game fish Paul Smith looks forward to a day on the river, soaking up all salmon season has to offer PAUL SMITH
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he sun is high in the sky when we finally reach the river, perfect light for my favourite silver-bodied fly. There’s nobody around — the early birds have taken their limits or grown weary trying. Salmo salar should be well rested and eager for my offering. I wade to the middle of the river and position myself six or seven feet upriver of a huge boulder that protrudes from St. Genevieve River in all but the highest water conditions. Today the water is just right, and the rock above Mayor’s hole is half out of water. It splits the river’s steady flow into two rips that fan like a fish’s tail, turbulent at the head near the rock, and gradually fading into slick blackness at the tail of the pool. The salmon have come far and must seek rest. The water is well oxygenated and cool. Quite likely there’s a fish or two taking advantage of the broken water below me, sparing themselves the relentless steady flow of the river, their torpedoshaped bodies defeating the current with undulating efficient strokes of their powerful tails. I open my fly box, the only thing in my life that is completely organized. There’s a row of No. 10 Blue Charms above a row of No. 8s, followed by No. 6s. Next a row of No. 10 Silver Doctors followed by 8s and so on. I’ve passed many long winter nights tying and fussing over these flies. Now it’s time for fur and feather to hit the water. I choose a No. 10 Silver Blue and tie it securely to my tippet, testing and clinching the knot with several hearty tugs. I start with short casts, my fly ripping across the current and probing the head of the pool. A foot more line off the reel and it’s down and across again, the tiny offering of silver and blue barely visible in the black water. On the third cast, there’s a flash of silver and a swirl just beneath the fly as it slides into the rip. Salar is interested. To the best of my ability I precisely repeat the cast — nothing. Again and again still nothing. Maybe I should rest him. I mark the spot in my brain and lengthen my line to fish further down the pool, but I will return. After covering the entire pool I reel up and start again. At this point I often change flies, but this just feels like a Silver Blue kind of day. A few
casts and I’m back to the marked spot. This time, the water explodes around the fly. My arm reacts instinctively and reaches skyward. Steel meets flesh and my lightweight wisp of graphite bows into a deep arc. This is salmon fishing. Newfoundland and Labrador has 177 scheduled salmon rivers. Last year 29,789 salmon passed through the counter on the Exploits River and 20,289 swam the Gander River. Overall salmon returns to Newfoundland rivers were up last year. After steep declines in earlier years, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. We are arguably the most prolific Atlantic salmon jurisdiction on earth. In addition, all our fish are wild and genetically pure. No hatchery-raised salmon swim in Newfoundland rivers. Salmon and free-flowing wild rivers are blessings that I fear we sometimes take for granted. As we move through the 21st century, I suspect wild places and wild creatures will take a back seat to urbanization in much of the world. Hopefully Newfoundlanders will collectively appreciate our wilderness and be a model of stewardship to the planet. Atlantic salmon aren’t called the “king of game fish” for nothing. Pound for pound, their fighting tenacity is unequaled and for some mysterious reason they savagely take flies, both wet and dry, while on a self-imposed fast. Atlantic salmon do not feed after they enter the river on their spawning quest. Anglers from all over the world come to Newfoundland to test and hone their skills on our rivers. For the most part, they are content to do battle and return their quarry to our rivers unharmed. Local anglers embrace the sport as well. Some of us concentrate on rivers near our homes. Others roam all over the province in search of the best fishing, retaining a few fish for the pot, and sending others on their way. Many of us just like to spend a day on a river, isolated by flowing water from the hectic pace of modern life. Salmon are a tangible economic asset and are just as essential as trout to our angling heritage. Let’s protect them against poachers, habitat destruction, and overfishing. And get out there and give salmon fishing a try. Paul Smith is a freelance writer living in Spaniard’s Bay, enjoying all the outdoors Newfoundland and Labrador has to offer. flyfishtherock@hotmail.com
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JUNE 4, 2006
INDEPENDENTSPORTS • 31
Straight talk from former dope smoker New Argonaut Ricky Williams frankly discusses his past marijuana use and what he hopes to bring to the CFL team By Damien Cox Torstar wire service
R
icky Williams isn’t interested in running. “Go ahead. Come on. Ask me whatever you want,” Toronto’s newest sports celebrity says. The only question Williams isn’t willing to tackle head-on is what the Argos should do if he failed one of the NFLmandated drug tests while playing in Canada. “That’s a hypothetical,” he says, then repeated the answer. But he is willing to respond to direct questions about his past involvement with marijuana that got him suspended on multiple occasions from the NFL. When was the last time he smoked a joint? “More than a year ago.” Does he miss it? “No.” Why not? “When people talk about drugs, they assume people take drugs because they enjoy it,” the 29-year-old running back says. “But really, it’s no different from overeating, or watching too much television, or drinking too much. You take drugs to make yourself feel better, to fill a hole.”
Ricky Williams
Has he filled that hole? “Most definitely,” he says. “That hole comes from not understanding yourself, from not having a purpose in life.” And what is his purpose in life now? “To be happy all of the time.” There was no public relations person interrupting to censor any questions and no pre-conditions to the interview. Williams, intelligent and thoughtful, has been through the media ringer more than
REUTERS/Hans Deryk
once and can speak very well for himself, thank you. He says he has no opinion on whether Canada, and the CFL, should be a haven for NFL players suspended for drug violations like, most recently, himself and Onterrio Smith of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. “It’s not for me to make that judgment,” he says. “I didn’t ask for this. It was put in my lap and it’s a good oppor-
tunity.” Spiritual and instinctively inclined to question, Williams has shorn his dreadlocks and the No. 34 he wore in the NFL with New Orleans and Miami, choosing No.27 after trying unsuccessfully to change numbers last season. He also points out he wore No.11, not 34, for three of his four years at the University of Texas, but clearly he wants everything to be as new as possible about what will be a brief stop with the Argos before returning to the Dolphins next season. He knows there are 12 players on the field for each team in a CFL game, hadn’t the foggiest idea what a rouge might be or what precisely this new league will be like. “For me, I try to fight against having pre-conceived notions about anything,” he says. Michael (Pinball) Clemons, a man who touches the soul of everyone he meets, has already made a connection with Williams. “I’ve never seen a football coach like that before,” Williams says with a chuckle. While agent Leigh Steinberg says he believes his client will be an overwhelming success in the CFL, history suggests that might not necessarily be the case. Marquee players from Anthony Davis to
Tom Cousineau to David Overstreet to Dexter Manley to Lawrence Phillips to Vince Ferragamo have come to the CFL and had mixed results at best. Those who didn’t succeed failed because they couldn’t come to grips with the mental and physical demands of a different style of football, believing their status and talent was enough. To be sure, if Williams believes he’s here for a pleasant football holiday, he will be disabused of that notion very quickly. “Will I dominate? I don’t think of it that way,” he says. “I will do my best to take responsibility, to take care of my body, to make my teammates better and to work hard. I don’t play to dominate. I play to participate as part of a team.” He says his affinity and respect for yoga carries over to the football field. “It doesn’t work unless you apply it to every facet of your life. The meaning of yoga is unity,” he says. “It preaches discipline.” Clemons has described Williams as having “quiet charisma” and being “cultured and inquisitive.” Over the course of a 30-minute, one-on-one chat, that was certainly the impression he conveyed. Fearless, too.
‘Safe and cordial people’ From page 32 one would think taking guns on trips would have become a much bigger headache. But Leyton says it’s not that bad — in fact, he thinks some things have improved. “Generally speaking, it works better for everyone. The world has changed, but the system that is in place now is better for all involved — the travellers and the airlines.” However, the recent controversy surrounding the federal gun registry draws Leyton’s criticism. For something that cost more than $1 billion — which could have been spent on healthcare, he points out — he says the registry needs to “simplify a few of these stupid regulations. “Like any dangerous substance, it has to be controlled, no question. Alcohol, drugs, guns, dangerous dogs, there has to be control, but some of the things with the registry seem to be done arbitrarily and they are annoying.” But they won’t stop Leyton from shooting. Just like it won’t stop the other hardcore shooters with the St. John’s Rod and Gun Club. Leyton says he’s been with the club so long he has seen generations of shooters come and go. Currently, the club boasts a healthy membership of about 250, which is, says Leyton, “on the high side of what we are accustomed to.” The group is open to new members any time and for an annual registration fee of $165, Leyton says members get lots of bang for their bucks. “I’d say we are the cheapest gun club in the world. We have a great membership of very safe and cordial people and that is the kind of member we look for here. Safety is our main concern, and it has to be when you use firearms.”
Keep your eye on the ball.
Just hockey From page 32 The last helmet-less player has tons of knowledge to pass on I’m sure, but words pale in comparison to on-ice experience. However, many players have won at other levels, including Olympic gold, world junior and others. Will Edmonton suffer from this lack of ring wealth? Doubtful, as it sure hasn’t stopped them so far. Perhaps the biggest pressure situation in the playoffs comes when you are on the penalty kill, and judging by Edmonton’s success so far being a man short, the Oilers should be able to handle it. I know I might be a little biased, but the Oilers have to be the best shot-blocking team I have ever seen. Feet, legs, arses, faces, backs, arms — you name it — the Oilers are willing to sacrifice any body part to stop the puck. And then there’s Roloson, who has been rock-solid in net, with few exceptions. When he had to make a big save, he was there. The Oilers have had a balanced scoring attack, with contributions coming from every line. Chris Pronger, tied for the scoring lead with Shawn Horcoff with 17 points in 17 games, has been huge for Edmonton throughout the playoffs and he will be relied on heavily again against Carolina’s attack. Pronger is my choice for playoff MVP, although Roloson is also deserving. In the end, I’m just glad to be able to sit back and watch some hockey. No stickwork, no clutching, no grabbing. Just hockey. Great hockey. whitebobby@yahoo.com
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INDEPENDENTSPORTS
SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY, JUNE 4-10, 2006 — PAGE 32
Elliott Leyton
Paul Daly/The Independent
By Bob White For The Independent
E
very Sunday, about half an hour’s drive from St. John’s, hundreds of gunshots ring out not too far from the Trans-Canada Highway, between the access roads for Holyrood and Salmonier Line. Alarming? Well, yes — but only in the sense this has been going on for decades. This is not a band of renegades or some illegal poaching activity. The St. John’s Rod and Gun Club, an organization that had its origins in the 1950s, holds trapshooting just about every Sunday throughout the year. The only weekends with no shooting come when weather has made the gravel road impassable. Elliott Leyton, professor emeritus at Memorial, became a trapshooter with the club soon after he arrived in this province in 1967 to begin his career at the university. He remembers vividly the day his favourite uncle, Sam Finestone, gave him his first rifle and shotgun as a 13-year-old growing up in British Columbia. He has been an avid shooter ever since. “Apart from my family and my work, shooting has been the centerpiece of my life,” says Leyton, 66. “I can’t imagine stopping shooting.” He laughs and adds, “I’ll do it until I’m a danger to others.” A director with the club, Leyton no longer participates in trapshooting events — not even the National Trapshooting day competition held May 28 at the Rod and Gun Club. The event was part of a
Gun club
Elliott Leyton and 250 other sharpshooters keep the St. John’s Rod and Gun Club competitive, vibrant — and safe North America-wide contest, during which clubs from all over participated in the same three events — singles, doubles and handicap. Afterwards, local members are able to compare their results with other clubs. Leyton proudly says his clubmates have traditionally done quite well on the Atlantic, national and international levels. At one time, he was also among the
better marksmen, but with arthritis and some slight vision problems, he’s decided to leave his competing days behind. But he’s far from retired. “I once wrote an article where I described shooting to be like a dance,” Leyton says. “You can’t be tense or nervous. You have to be smooth, like a dancer. And the payoff is wonderful. Those targets, when you hit them, they
disappear into a puff of ink. They are transformed in a nanosecond.” Listening to the passion in his voice as he speaks about shooting, it’s not hard to understand why he has travelled all over the world with his guns in search of game birds. He has shot in several South American countries, including Paraguay and Bolivia, in Scotland, Ireland, across Canada, and in many other places. For all that, Leyton has but one shooting trip in this province under his belt. Just one, and it came shortly after he arrived in the province almost 40 years ago. He travelled with a friend to the barrens on the Southern Shore, not far from St. Shott’s. “It was a blinding sleet storm,” he says. “It was so bad, I almost started to cry. And with all of that, the closest shot we got was of a partridge about 200 yards away.” Leyton’s life in academia as an anthropologist has been high-profile, both on and off the local university campus. The courses he taught were always much sought-after by students — and his work on mass murderers and why human beings kill others garnered him attention all over the world. Leyton is a world-renowned expert in this rather ghastly field, and has received requests for his knowledge from international police organizations and media. It’s also safe to say he’s well known in many airports too. When you travel with firearms as often as Leyton does, your name becomes memorable. With the tighter restrictions since 9/11, See “Safe and cordial,” page 31
Oilers built for new NHL
W
hen watching the celebrations (is that the right word?) on Whyte Avenue as the Edmonton Oilers advanced to the Stanley Cup final, I wondered how many expatriate Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were in the crowd? Hundreds probably. Thousands perhaps. Well, many more from this province, and across the country, are with them as we yearn for the return of the Stanley Cup to Canadian soil. The last Great White North hope resides in oil country again, rekindling a city that was aptly named City of Champions back in the high-scoring days of ’80s powerhouse Oiler teams. Isn’t it ironic that the Stanley Cup
BOB WHITE
Bob the bayman final finds its way back to Edmonton the year the NHL changed its style, which is very much akin to the style perfected by the Oilers dynasty 20 years ago? I’m anticipating a great Stanley Cup final between the Edmonton Oilers and Carolina Hurricanes. Edmonton has either overachieved throughout the playoffs, or underachieved during the regular season. Whatever the case, the Oilers in recent
weeks have played like a team that belongs exactly where they are right now. Yes, they just squeaked into the playoffs, but they have a team that is built for this new era in the NHL. Speed, grit, skill and guts galore — not to mention great goaltending from Dwayne Roloson — has helped Canada’s team (well, they are the only Canadian team left) dispatch three tough opponents en route to the cup final. Carolina seems like a close match for Edmonton, as the Hurricanes have similar talents and the common denominator of great goaltending with Cam Ward (and a little help from Martin Gerber along the way.) Had Buffalo not run into some
injuries on the blueline, the Sabres might be in their place, but you can’t take anything away from the Hurricanes. They got the job done and considering they were listed as a potential cup finalist prior to the start of the playoffs, the fact that they actually made it this far is quite unique. All of the other top teams fell by the wayside, most of them in the early going — Carolina persevered where others faltered. So who will take the coveted prize? I want Edmonton to relive the glory days and hopefully Whyte Avenue doesn’t go up in flames. But if it comes down to Stanley Cup experience, Carolina has the edge. Four players have been on NHL championship teams, with Cory
Stillman having won the most recent Cup with Tampa Bay in 2003-04. Oleg Tverdosky, a scratch throughout the series with Buffalo, won with New Jersey in 2003-03. Aaron Ward won two rings with Detroit in 1996-97 and 1997-98. And veteran Mark Recchi last skated with the cup 15 years ago, in 1990-91 with Pittsburgh. Throw in seasoned vets like Glen Wesley and Rod Brind’Amour, and one would have to give the edge in experience to Carolina. Especially when you consider the only person with the Oilers who has a Stanley Cup ring (four of them, three with Edmonton and one with New York) is coach Craig MacTavish. See “Just hockey,” page 31